Impact of the Medicare Chronic Disease Management program on the conduct of Australian dietitians.

Conclusions The CDM program creates challenges for dietitians working in primary care, including how to sustain the quality of patient-centred care and yet maintain equitable business practices. To ensure the CDM program appropriately assists patients to receive optimal care, further review of the CDM program within the scope of dietetics is required. What is known about the topic? The Australian CDM program is designed to facilitate patients to receive subsidised multidisciplinary care for CDM. Dietetics is the third most utilised allied health profession within the CDM program. What does this paper add? This paper demonstrates that dietitians experience challenges in providing services to patients using the CDM program, including pressure to keep fees down, high administrative load, difficulties accessing clear information on compliance requirements, and face barriers to providing best-practice care to patients with chronic disease. What are the implications for practitioners? Changes to the Australian CDM program are required to help dietitians provide health care in line with best-practice guidelines for CDM, and sustainable business practices. PMID: 25514419 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research