Wiser Healthcare response to the Consultation Draft of ‘Australia’s Primary Health Care 10 Year Plan 2022-2032

November 2021

Wiser Healthcare welcomes the opportunity to provide our views on the Australian Department of Health’s 10-year plan for Primary Health Care with the aim of strengthening the primary health care system to deliver the best health outcomes for Australians. We have outlined the following recommendations:

1. Improve the availability and quality of data on the extent of low-value care use to drive improvements in the delivery of appropriate care (Stream 1, Action Area B);
2. The development of eReferral needs to be a priority to facilitate the implementation of clinical decision support tools to aid appropriate referral for imaging and pathological testing (Stream 1, Action Area B);
3. In the absence of robust evidence that precision medicine results in an improvement of population health, precision medicine should not be an objective of the primary health care plan (Stream 1, Action Area C);
4. Engagement with government entities, such as NPS Medicine Wise and Choosing Wisely, is critical to empower people and communities to navigate the health care system and reduce low-value care (Stream 2, Action Area F);
5. The Plan needs to provide leadership in addressing primary health care’s carbon emissions, particularly through the overconsumption of inappropriate or unnecessary health care.