Vitalis Health Co-Founder and Director, Alex Chrisment, says the short-stay hospital model can enable Australia’s value-based care ambitions.
The recent Short Stay Hospital Forum highlighted the growing recognition of the short-stay hospital model as an enabler of Australia’s value-based care ambitions.
Keynote speaker Arnaldo Valedon, President of the International Association for Ambulatory Surgery, shared over 20 years of global experience implementing this model across the US and other countries.
The results are compelling: improved health outcomes and significantly reduced costs.
Equally compelling were the insights from Jane Griffiths, CEO of Day Hospitals Australia, revealing that less than 0.05% of same-day hospital patients require escalation to overnight care. This is a powerful testament to the model’s performance when paired with the right patient selection.
Yet despite its promise, this model still faces significant hurdles in Australia:
• Uneven funding frameworks between acute and short stay providers
• Potentially disproportionate compliance demands on short stay hospitals
• Rising infrastructure costs limiting new capacity building
• Market distortions that restrict fair competition and stifle innovation.
This model challenges the status quo, introducing competition into areas that have traditionally been profitable for many acute hospital providers while often subsidising crucial and more complex but less sustainable services they provide to the health system.
As always, any change to a system can have far-reaching consequences if not orchestrated carefully.
So, how do we overcome these barriers?
Three actionable directions were discussed at the forum:
1 Establish industry-wide performance indicators for transparency and accountability
2 Systematically collect performance data to inform decisions
3 Reform funding models to increase consistency across payers, incentivise outcomes and ensure sustainability
Arnaldo also highlighted how, in the US, providers are paid to report, enabling robust performance tracking. It is only once performance is understood that they are paid to perform, often via shared savings.
Globally, growth in short-stay care and value-based care is supported by tech-enabled, integrated at-home services that ensure continuity of care.
This is where Vitalis Vitalis Healthcare at Home can help facilitate the transition. We are committed to enabling safe, high-performing, and sustainable healthcare, and we welcome every opportunity to collaborate with like-minded partners to build this future together.
Click here to learn more about partnering with Vitalis.
