This Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day, Scale My Clinic reiterates its ardent commitment to the shared global goal of 'Health For All' – where everyone gets fair and equitable access to quality healthcare. UHC Day is commemorated on 12th December every year and the 2021 theme: "Leave No One's Health Behind: Invest in health systems for all" is aimed at creating awareness around the need to invest more in health and allocate resources efficiently and equitably, if we are to achieve health and wellbeing for all by 2030.
Dr Sachin Patel, Co-Founder of Scale My Clinic states: "Health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of any kind. Ensuring Universal Health Coverage is extremely important, especially to those of us in the health and medical care systems, because our driving motivator is to make a tangible difference to the health of our communities and the health of the nation at large."
To this end, Scale My Clinic's ultimate mission is to help more and more General Practitioners across Australia develop their businesses and revolutionise their medical practices so that they can, in turn, make a wider impact on their communities and 'Leave No One's Health Behind'! Scale My Clinic is dedicated to helping private GP owners organise their practices more efficiently and effectively, so that they can propel clinic growth and create successful results as they continue to make a difference in their patients' lives. In essence, Scale My Clinic's vision is to help more doctors help more patients in a sustainable way!
Commenting on the barriers to UHC, Dr Patel says: "A critical component to achieving Universal Health Coverage is strong, resilient, high-functioning health systems. This can only be made possible when governments provide the appropriate support and resources needed by healthcare systems to effectively treat everyone without leaving anyone behind. And that continues to be one of the biggest gaps in ensuring universal health coverage today!"
Inadequate government funding remains a significant challenge to UHC in most countries. According to the 2021 'Health of the Nation' report by Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), genuine reform in the sector is needed and "a great place to start would be putting General Practice on a more sustainable, long-term financial footing". The total government healthcare spend for primary care is in decline, leaving GPs and general practice services with less than 8% of the total health expenditure. Despite this, General Practices in Australia still provide more than twice the number of episodes of care a year than hospitals, and all at one-sixth of the cost!
The second barrier to UHC, according to Dr Patel, is at the practice level and this includes the tools, skills, techniques and strategies that GP owners – who are usually doctors – need to create and build to ensure effective, efficient, high-performing and sustainable businesses that tangibly affect the community. Against this backdrop, Scale My Clinic provides crucial business knowledge and resources to help private GP owners revamp their businesses – to ensure sustainable business growth and lead more balanced lives as they continue to offer equitable, high-quality care.
In conclusion, Dr Patel states: "While we can only hope for change at the policy level, we can definitely effect change at the practice level. There are several onuses on those of us that own businesses – our own general practices or primary care businesses. But we need to take immediate action and start running our businesses better, more effectively, and more efficiently because help is not coming from elsewhere…we've got to help ourselves! And that's why receiving coaching in the space of business excellence can be really beneficial to achieving universal health coverage."
