They also upskill and reskill existing health practitioners (domestic and international). Most of this education requires universities to ensure that students complete compulsory clinical placements. The majority of these occur in public hospitals/health services. As well as workforce development, universities undertake substantial health-related research. UA’s response is concerned with this aspect of IHACPA’s pricing framework, particularly consultation question 7 regarding teaching, training and research (TTR) block funding.

Background

IHACPA has a major role in determining the amounts of funding that flow to public health services for TTR. Currently, TTR is block-funded and amounts are based on the national efficient cost. TTR funding covers a range of activities, including (although not limited to) teaching and training of new-entry tertiary education students.

Visibility of how block funding is used after allocation is poor and IHACPA has not yet been able to develop a more transparent Activity Based Funding (ABF) unit for teaching and training. This is despite development of the Australian Teaching and Training Classification (ATTC)1. The main issue is the inadequacy of the data collected from state and territory health services. Currently, provision of this data is voluntary, on a National Best Endeavours basis.

Greater transparency in TTR funding use and outcomes has been called for by many stakeholders, including universities who often pay a per-student daily fee to place their students in public health services. Payments from universities are in addition to the significant TTR funding already provided to public health services2. Transparency of TTR block funding is also a recommendation in the Mid-Term Review of the NHRA Addendum 2020–253.

Recommendation

That further efforts be made into gathering Australian Teaching and Training Classification (ATTC) data from public health services. One suggestion is to make health service provision of the ATTC data a requirement of their receiving teaching, training and research block funding.