Healthcare expertise

The sharp rise in the numbers of people living longer coincides with significant growth in the numbers living with chronic disease. This has led to a shift away from the 20th century focus on infectious diseases to a 21st century focus on the treatment and management of chronic illnesses.

At the same time, expectations about healthcare are changing wholesale. Increasingly, individuals want choice and control over their treatment and care, and the focus is shifting away from the quantity of interventions to the quality of outcome.

For many governments, this is a key driver for new healthcare measures (and payment systems) based on outcomes not activity and of exploration of new funding models, such as personal budgets.

For clinicians, this means looking at how to better support individuals to make informed healthcare decisions which will deliver the outcome patients want.

At the same time, there has been a major growth in demand for healthcare services, which has also driven the development of new and often expensive healthcare technologies. While the global financial crisis may have brought the issue of healthcare funding to the fore, the resulting health inflation in every major economy has long exceeded the growth rate of GDP and this pattern is set to continue.

In Australia alone, healthcare costs are expected to increase from the current level of 15% of all Government spending to 26% by 2050, or 4.0% and 7.1% of GDP respectively.^* This pattern is repeated time and again across the globe with healthcare spending in the USA now at an all time high of 17% of GDP.

This means that healthcare is progressively becoming less and less affordable, threatening accessibility. This presents the considerable challenge of broadening access to healthcare - which means tackling health inflation - while improving quality. These are the challenges that Bupa, as a healthcare funder and provider, is focused on.

We are committed to utilising our clinical knowledge and international experience to make patient-centred, quality, affordable healthcare more accessible, particularly in the areas of wellbeing, chronic disease management and ageing.

We are developing innovative approaches to support patients to make informed healthcare decisions and to coach patients to manage their health better, including managing complex chronic conditions.

Alongside these efforts, we are also innovating to provide affordable healthcare for the long term, including harnessing effective new technologies to benefit those we serve directly and the public healthcare providers we work with.

Finally, clinical excellence remains the foundation of all we do, from our new international hospital quality assurance programme through to creating algorithms so we can provide evidence-based information within hours to help people decide which treatments represent the best option for them.

Our goal is to ensure that we deliver the best outcomes for those in our care, that resources are directed appropriately and with proper safeguards in place, and that more people have greater access to quality healthcare - in short, to help more people live longer, healthier, happier lives.

Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen
Group Medical Director, Bupa