Researchers from The University of Queensland (UQ) will focus on improving health workforce planning to provide accessible and affordable primary care for Australians with a grant from the Federal Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF).
Researchers Professor Lisa Nissen, Dr Jean Spinks and Dr Isaac Koomson from the Centre for the Business and Economics of Health (CBEH) received more than $2.8 million through the MRFF’s Primary Health Care Research Initiative, announced by the Minister for Health and Aged Care.
Led by Professor Nissen, the 3-year project will analyse the existing primary health workforce and propose new models to coordinate multidisciplinary teams of health care professionals who work to their full scope of practice to provide quality patient care.
“Having team-based primary care, with practitioners working to the top of scope of practice, is the aim of the Australian Government,” Professor Nissen said.
“We now need to determine what constitutes the optimal team formation and how this impacts population health and health system efficiency.”
The project will undertake research to understand the optimal health workforce combination, incorporating the preferences of consumers and healthcare providers to identify better ways to incentivise team care.
The multidisciplinary research team includes fellow UQ clinicians and researchers Associate Professor Geoff Argus, Professor Fiona Foyer, Associate Professor Susie De Jersey, Professor Stephen Birch, Mr Aaron Grogan and Associate Professor Sjaan Gomersall.
Additionally, the project will be delivered in collaboration with researchers from the Australian National University (ANU), Lancaster University, Monash University and the University of Western Australia (UWA), and in partnership with Queensland Health, ACT Health, Health Consumers Queensland and Health Care Consumers Association (ACT).
This project is one of two grants awarded to UQ from the latest round of MRFF funding.
