Please go through the assignment requirement, comprising table of content, page numbers, introduction, summary of the body and conclusion. Additional inclusion of pictorials, tables and appendicies must be there as a total of around 1500 words.
Purpose of the Assessment:
The purpose of this assessment is to demonstrate that you have developed a good working knowledge of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)‘ Statements of Priorities’, the ‘Policy and Funding Guidelines’, and the ‘ Victorian Health Service Performance Monitoring Framework”and the role of the documents in ensuring that health services across the state of Victoria are delivered and governed as intended.
Background:
The opening paragraphs of thePolicy and Funding Guidelines 2015 -2016 introduce the purposes of the document as follows:
The Victorian Government is responsible for ensuring a wide range of health services are delivered to the Victorian community. The Department of Health & Human Services (‘the department’) plans, develops policy, funds and regulates health service providers and activities that promote and protect the health of Victorians. Through the department, the government funds more than 500 organisations to provide various health services to Victorians including:
• acute and subacute healthcare delivered by public hospitals and in community settings
• mental health and alcohol and drugs services delivered by public hospitals and community service organisations (CSOs)
• residential and community care for older people, support and assistance to enable people to function independently in their own homes, positive ageing programs, and healthy and active living
• primary health services delivered by a wide community of health services and others
• health promotion and protection through emergency management, public health and related preventative services, education and regulation
• emergency transport and ambulance services through Ambulance Victoria.
– The Department of Health and Human Services policy and funding guidelines 2015: Volume 2, Health operations 2015–16 (‘the guidelines’) represent the system-wide terms and conditions (for funding, administrative and clinical policy) of funding for government-funded healthcare organisations.
The guidelines reflect the government and department’s role as a system manager and underpin the agreements at an organisational-level (Statements of Priorities (SoPs) and Service Agreements). The agreements set out the requirements that funded organisations must comply with in addition to their contractual and statutory obligations, outline activity that is required in order to receive funding, and detail expectations of administrative and clinical conduct.
The guidelines are relevant for all funded organisations including health services, CSOs and other funded organisations such as Ambulance Victoria. Volume 2 is presented across four chapters. The chapters separate the pricing and funding models from the administrative and clinical conditions of funding. The aim here is to improve the clarity and accessibility of the guidelines.
Chapter 1: Overview, key changes and new initiatives provides an overview of the accountability framework for funded organisations and introduces the most significant developments in funding, policy, government priorities and service delivery for the coming year.
Chapter 2: Pricing and funding arrangements for Victoria’s health system details the pricing and funding arrangements for public hospital services and for all other outputs provided by the department.
Chapter 3: Conditions of funding. In order to receive funding from the Victorian Government, all funded organisations must comply with standards and policies that ensure the delivery of safe, high-quality services and responsible financial management. This chapter details the relevant standards and policies that may apply.
Chapter 4: Funding and activity levels provides the tables detailing the modelled budgets for 2015–16 as well as the activity tables that detail the 201516 targets for a range of programs across the health system.
What you need to submit:
Each student needs to prepare a 1,500 word report that describes how the DHHS Statement of Priorities, the Policy and Funding Guidelines and the Health Services Performance Monitoring Framework are used to underpin the following key purposes:
• The Victorian Government’s responsibility to deliver relevant, high quality and accessible health services to the community; and
• The Department of Health and Human Services responsibility to ensure that healthcare providers receive funding for services they have rendered
Write your report as a briefing for health service managers. Reportsare to be completed using the report format. Reports should open with a brief overview of theDHHS statement of priorities, the policy and funding guidelines and the health services monitoring framework as a whole, followed by a brief description of each of the components of the document.
The body of the report should then demonstrate some practical ways in which each of the parts of the Statement of priorities, policy and funding guidelines and the health services monitoring framework have been designed to accomplish the two purposes outlined above. Students may choose to do this by discussing each document and components therein individually, or as a whole – using a specific category of patient or service type as an example.
Well written reports willarticulate the linkages between the three documents and within the broader context of the Australian Healthcare system (e.g. key documents such as the National Healthcare Agreement and the National Health Information Agreement; and agencies such as the Department of Health and Ageing, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority will be included).
Reports should include a short discussion about the importance of the statement of priorities, the policy and funding guidelines and the health services performance monitoring framework from the perspective of healthcare agencies, healthcare providers and/or responsibilities of Health Information Managers.
The reports content must be supported by citation of a range of government documents and other relevant literature and must include a reference list in Harvard or APA style.
Presentation:
• Report format is presented by a front page, index, executive summary, introduction and the body of report is clearly sign-posted by means of headings and sub-headings, a conclusion, appendix and a reference listing.
• Writing is fluent, clear and purposeful English, by using vocabulary and language which suits the writing task and consists of meaning to the intended audience. Vocabulary related to the subject has been employed.
• Efficient para-phrasing and summarizing of material from other sources, having minimal use of quotation. Demonstrated capability to correctly acknowledge sources using the Harvard or APA referencing system.