Abstract
Australia and Singapore are both island nations in the Asia-Pacific region with different demographics but similar health systems. Chronic back conditions are common to both countries with associated significant healthcare expenditure and loss of quality of life. Reporting of quality indicators of healthcare is a relatively recent development in these two countries, and trends in both outcomes and patient experiences suggest that the rate of unfavourable events as a result of healthcare interventions remains high but comparable to other Western countries. With respect to spine care, there is great variability in the appropriateness of recommended treatments among healthcare practitioners and in the rates of operative interventions by spine surgeons. A spine registry has been well established in Singapore for many years but is only just being piloted in Australia. In both countries, there is a lack of integration of spine care quality data which makes the task of reducing unwanted outcomes and variability in practice a significant challenge for the future.
Keywords
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Australian Bureau of Statistics. Census 2016.
Statistics Singapore. Singstat.gov.sg
Duckett SJ. The Australian healthcare system. Melbourne.: OUP; 2004.
Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Seattle. http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-2016
Most efficient healthcare around the world. Bloomberg.com
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2017. The burden of musculoskeletal conditions in Australia: a detailed analysis of the Australian Burden of Disease Study 2011. Australian Burden of Disease Study series no. 13. BOD 14. Canberra: AIHW.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2016. Impacts of chronic back problems. Bulletin 137. Cat. no. AUS 204. Canberra: AIHW.
Singapore Burden of Disease Study Group. Epidemiology & Disease Control Division, Ministry of Health, Singapore, 2014.
Institute of Medicine. 1990. Medicare: a strategy for quality assurance, vol. 2. Kathleen Lohr, editor. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Donabedian A. Evaluating the quality of medical care. Milbank Mem Fund Q. 1966;44:166.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The National Healthcare Quality Report; 2003.
Wilson RML, Runciman WB, Gibberd RW, Harrison BT, Newby L, Hamilton JD. The quality in Australian health care study. Med J Aust. 1995;163:458–71.
Hamilton JD, Gibberd RW, Harrison BT. After the quality in Australian health care study, what happened? Med J Aust. 2014;201(1):23.
Jackson T, Michel JL, Roberts RF, Jorm CM, Wakefield JG. A classification of hospital-acquired diagnoses for use with routine hospital data. Med J Aust. 2009;191(10):544–8.
The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards. Australasian clinical indicator report: 2009–2016. 18th ed.
Chen A, Retegan C, Vinluan J, Beiles CB. Potentially preventable deaths in the Victorian audit of surgical mortality. ANZ J Surg. 2017;87:17–21.
Runciman WB, Hunt T, Hannaford NA, Hibbert PD, Westbrook JI, Coiera EW, Day RO, Hindmarsh DM, McGlynn EA, Braithwaite J. CareTrack: assessing the appropriateness of health care delivery in Australia. MJA. 2012;197(2):100–5.
McGlynn EA, Asch SM, Adams J, Keesey J, Hicks J, DeCristofaro A, Kerr EA. The quality of health care delivered to adults in the United States. N Engl J Med. 2003;348(26):2636–45.
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health care. The First Australian Atlas of Healthcare Variation; 2015.
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. The First Australian Atlas of Healthcare Variation; 2017.
Clement RC, Welander A, Stowel C, Cha TD, Chen JL, Davies M, Fairbank JC, Foley KT, Gehrchen M, Hagg O, Jacobs WC, Kahler R, Khan SN, Lieberman IH, Morisson B, Ohnmeiss DD, Peul WC, Shonnard NH, Smuck MW, Solberg TK, Stromqvist BH, Van Hoof ML, Wasan AD, Willems PC, Yeo W, Fritzell P. A proposed set of metrics for standardised outcome reporting in the management of low back pain. Acta Orthop. 2015;86(5):523–33.
Van Hoof ML, Jacobs WCH, Willems PC, Wouters MWJM, De Kleuver M, Peul WC, Ostelo RWJG, Fritzell P. Evidence and practice in spine registries. Acta Orthop. 2015;86(5):534–44.
National Health and Medical Research Council. Evidence-based management of acute musculoskeletal pain. Canberra: NHMRC; 2004.
Williams CM, Maher CG, Hancock MJ, McAuley JH, McLachlan AJ, Britt H, Fahridin S, Harrison C, Latimer J. Low back pain and best practice care: a survey of general practice physicians. Arch Intern Med. 2010;170(3):271–7.
Ramanathan SAS. Appropriate care for low back pain in Australia: evidence, expert opinion, current practice and patient perspectives. PhD thesis, University of South Australia, 2016.
Goh MR, Po IYY, Olafsdottir K. Low back pain in Changi General Hospital: an observational study. Proc Singapore Health Care. 2010;19(3):175–82.
Rajaee S, Bae H, Kanim L, Delamarter R. Spinal fusion in the United States: analysis of trends from 1998 to 2008. Spine. 2012;37:67–76.
Harris IA, Dao ATT. Trends in spinal fusion surgery in Australia: 1997 to 2006. ANZ J Surg. 2009;79:783–8.
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Low back pain and sciatica in over 16s: assessment and management. Invasive treatments. NICE guideline NG59. Methods, evidence and recommendations. London: NICE; 2016.
Duckett S, Jorm C, Danks L. Strengthening safety statistics: how to make hospital safety data more useful. Melbourne: Grattan Institute; 2017.
Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge the contributions of Prof. S.B. Tan (Director of Spine Service, Dept. of Orthopaedic Surgery, Singapore General Hospital), Mr. William Yeo (Senior Manager of the ODC) and Ms. Chong Hwei Chi (Senior Principal Physiotherapist).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ashman, B., Chen Li Tat, J. (2019). Quality Spine Care in Australasia. In: Ratliff, J., Albert, T., Cheng, J., Knightly, J. (eds) Quality Spine Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97990-8_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97990-8_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97989-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97990-8
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)