Published by BMC Palliative Care, Thursday 7 March
Governments should strive to make palliative care a universally accessible service. But for this to happen, new approaches to funding will need to be adopted, based on the experience of funding reforms in other parts of the health system. At present, funding models for palliative care vary across nations, with few adopting contemporary payment designs that apply elsewhere in their health system. In this paper in the BMC medical journal, Grattan Institute’s Health Program Director Stephen Duckett suggests palliative care payment models should move toward activity-based funding, using an agreed classification and with performance monitoring.