Media Releases
Indigenous Health Short-Changed by a Lack of Accountability
Over the past 10 years, funding for Indigenous health programs has increased by 245% with no appreciable improvements in health outcomes, shows a new report being released this Wednesday.
In the last year alone Commonwealth funding for Indigenous health has increased by 50%—from $ 492 million in 2008 to more than $600 million in 2009.
In Closing the Accountability Gap: The First Step Towards Better Indigenous Health CIS Policy Analyst Sara Hudson argues that the untargeted nature of government spending in indigenous health means that is difficult to know what services the money is buying and for whom.
‘We have a bizarre situation where programs are provided simply because someone thinks they are a good idea. In the absence of evidence-based policy and targeting of resources, most of the governments’ commitments to close the gap are merely wishful thinking.’
‘Improvements in Indigenous health outcomes will only occur once the lack of accountability that plagues the Aboriginal health sector ends,’ says Hudson.
Complex funding arrangements, where one Aboriginal health service can receive up to 42 different ‘buckets’ of funding make it difficult to track how funds are being spent.
Hudson uncovered that fewer than half of Aboriginal health services file annual reports.
‘The Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) face few consequences for not filing reports with some serious repercussions, including financial mismanagement, insolvency and even fraud,’ she says.
If we are to ‘close the gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous health outcomes, we need greater transparency and accurate reporting. An essential requirement for receiving funding should be the collection of data showing how money is being spent and what it is achieving.
There is nothing wrong with having diversity, but until all health services are held up to the same standards of reporting, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders will continue to suffer from a truly unequal health care system.
Sara Hudson is a Policy Analysis with the Centre for Independent Studies.
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