DIGITAL MEDIA KIT FOR IMMEDIATE USE, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2025
AUDIO NEWS GRABS
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Associate Professor Colman Taylor, Health Economist, Policy Strategist & Chief Vision Officer, HTANALYSTS & Board Member, The Genomics Coalition, SYDNEY
Grab A
Australia’s health technology and reimbursement processes are extremely rigorous, but they are extremely clunky and slow. Patients wait a very long time for access to innovative technologies, and this leads to inefficiencies and reduced patient outcomes in the system.
Grab B
The current process for reimbursement results in sub-optimal patient care, because innovation doesn't get to the patient in the fastest amount of time. Currently, patients with private health insurance pay extra premiums, but despite that, they often lag behind public patients in being able to access the newest medical innovations.
Grab C
If patients can access life-changing treatments in a timely manner, this can lead to better patient outcomes, which has enormous flow-on impacts to the Australian economy through productivity and better wellbeing.
Grab D
Current reimbursement policies in Australia can lead to delays, which in the case of patients with structural heart disease, means they can progress in their disease and no longer be eligible for treatment.
Grab E
The current timeline for innovative medical technologies to obtain reimbursement in Australia is around 4.7 years. That means patients are waiting, on average, 4.7 years to receive innovation that can dramatically change their lives.
Grab F
Other countries around the world face the same challenges as Australia, but have implemented innovative pathways to capture the benefits of medical technologies earlier. Countries like Germany and the US have access pathways whereby reimbursement is provided early, and data is collected to show the impact directly to patients. Australia doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. It just needs to catch up.
Stuart, 54, Consultant, father & grandfather whose answer to one question saved his life: ‘Public or private?’, SYDNEY
Grab A
July 18, 2022. Normal day at work. I was at work, it was about 9:15 in the morning and something just didn't feel right about my body. And then just in the blink of an eye, my aorta tore. I didn't know that at the time because I had no symptoms, no warning signs, no sore arm, no shoulder, no pins and needles, no headache, nothing that would relate to heart. So, I was really confused.
Grab B
I had a seven-hour operation. It was an aortic dissection, which is basically the valve, and it’s your ascending aorta, and it's the whole root of the aorta. That medical device saved my life that day. It didn't just buy me more time. It gave me my life back.
Grab C
I felt amazing when I knew that I had gone public purely because it ended up saving my life. I didn't realize that at the time but obviously waking up in hospital with a 10 to 15 per cent chance of living and then being told that it was because you chose public or private still doesn't sit right with me, but it's the truth.
Grab D
I was really surprised when I found out that my private health insurance didn't offer me the latest and greatest medical technology that the world has to offer. I just assumed that being privately insured was my only answer that day and it should have been my only answer. But there's inequality in the system.
Grab E
Every patient, it shouldn't matter their postcode, their status in life, or if they're privately insured or in the public system, they should have the only priority should be access to the latest and greatest medical technology that Australia has to offer in the world. And it shouldn't matter the system you're in.
Grab F
Post open heart surgery, my life is unbelievable. I feel stronger. I feel fitter. My mind is just so clear. I have clarity. Believe it or not, I'm the actually the person I always wanted to be.
Grab G
20 years ago, an aortic dissection was a death sentence. No one lived, you know. So what's happened in that time, 20 short years, is the technology is so great now.
Prof Jayme Bennetts, Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Monash University & Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Victoria Heart Hospital, MELBOURNE
Grab A
The overarching purpose of this report is to try and improve ways for us to be able to access new technologies and improved devices earlier in their development phase to allow improved access for patients to better therapies in Australia.
Grab B
Ultimately, these delays mean that new technologies, new devices, which may provide better patient outcomes are not being made available to patients as early as they are possible.
Grab C
The irony is that public patients often are able to access new devices and technologies earlier because the user pay system in the public means that once it's approved safe through TGA processes, they become accessible if the hospital is able to pay. In the private system, we need to go through the second and third layers where both device efficacy and then device funding is approved through two different processes. So, and until that funding mechanism is in place, these devices are not able to be utilised in the private system.
Grab D
These barriers affect all patients across all specialties. The rapid growth of technology and the improvement in devices that actually allows patients to access lower risk procedures and lower risk therapies that might manage their underlying disease process better is particularly unique to both cardiology, structural heart disease and cardiac surgery, where these technologies are rapidly growing and becoming more available more quickly.
Grab E
The best example is that with the transcatheter aortic valve implants in Australia it was delayed over five years compared to some jurisdictions. That meant there were a large number of patients that had complex and high-risk surgery that may well have been able to avoid that if we had those devices available earlier.
Grab F
I think what we need in Australia is a mechanism by which these new devices and technologies can be given approval ahead of some of the longer-term outcome studies that are currently part of that approval process. The US has a model where, some new technologies that, with an appropriate assessment, are thought to be highly likely to be of benefit are given earlier approval and at a funding level that would justify the tech, the research and development that's been put into those technologies. In Australia, we don't have that, and waiting for the evidence to become available means that we are often delayed getting access to these technologies and a similar system would be quite helpful.