Health
Multi Purpose Services - Health & Aged Care Services for Rural NSW
- Status: Work in Progress
- Electorate: STATEWIDE
- Start: Ongoing
- Finish: Ongoing
Delivering better services to rural and remote communities
The MPS Program aims to pool the assorted health and aged care resources available to rural and remote communities under one structure, into a multifunction, easily assessable, sustainable health, aged and community services facility.
The demographic and social profile of rural Australia has changed substantially over the last decade as has the way health care is delivered and funded. This is having a major impact on small rural and remote communities - hospital stays are shorter, there is expanding use of technology, more services are delivered in the community and increasingly more older people are choosing to be cared for at home. Further, there is greater emphasis on health improvement and prevention programs.
To address these changes Australian and state and territory governments have developed the Multi-Purpose Service model. Under this arrangement, the Australian Government provides aged care funding which is combined with state and territory government funding for health services and infrastructure to bring a flexible mix and range of aged care and health services together under one management structure. This provides small communities who are having difficulty supporting a range of independently run services the opportunity to develop a more coordinated and cost-effective approach to service delivery.
The services of an MPS can include:
- acute services, including emergency and outpatient services;
- residential aged care services, nursing home or hostel services or both;
- community based services, such as community nursing, physiotherapy, podiatry, etc.
These integrated services, reduce administration overheads in order to deliver better services to rural and remote communities.
The greater aims of the MPS delivery model are:
- establishment of viable acute health, aged care and community services;
- improved access to appropriate services; and
- increased co-ordination, flexibility and innovative service delivery.