The regional effect of the Australia's Consumer Directed Care model for older people

Speaker: Professor Brenda Gannon (Director of Research, School of Economics, University of Queensland) and Michelle Tran

Webinar topic: Consumer Directed Care (CDC) is being embraced within Australia and internationally as a means to promote autonomy and choices in the delivery of health and community aged care services. While evaluation of CDC in Australia is growing, little is known about the spatial implications of such policy. With differences in the utilization of home care services across locations, the introduction of a national CDC program may affect different regions to different extents. This paper explores the regional effect of the CDC introduction on older Australians’ mental health using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. We find that the CDC model has a larger effect on older adults’ mental health in the areas with higher utilization of Home Care Packages. Using our own uniquely compiled dataset from My Aged care website, we find suggestive evidence of a regional pattern in both services and non-services fees across Queensland.

Speaker bio: Professor Brenda Gannon is a Professor in the School of Economics and Affiliate Professor at the Centre for the Business and Economics of Health, The University of Queensland, and an affiliate member of CEPAR (ARC Centre for Research Excellence in Population Ageing Research). Professor Gannon is an international expert in the field of Health Economics of Ageing and has won over $28 million, as chief investigator, in collaborative research income, with economics, medicine and social science with academia and industry. She has developed a range of projects in Economics of Ageing and Longevity on topics of physical activity and cognition, health shocks and health care utilization, and consumer-directed care and home care. She has worked extensively on interdisciplinary research with gerontologists, clinicians and methodologists. Her work has been influential in the development of programs for falls preventions and informing policy on disability and social inclusion, and has positively impacted on the health of many older people across the world.

Speaker bio: Michelle Tran is a PhD candidate at School of Economics, University of Queensland (UQ). Michelle’s research interest includes Health Economics, Economics of Education and Applied Econometrics.

Michelle completed her Bachelor of Economics degree with First Class Honours at the University of Queensland in 2017. Her research paper, completed as part of the degree, investigates the role of performances and gender in the choice of STEM subjects, university degrees and occupations. In 2018, she started a 4-year PhD program working on the project “Economics of Aging, Health Outcomes and Workforce Planning”. Michelle’s doctoral research aims at establishing causal effects of family’s health, economic resources and health policies on older adults’ health and healthcare utilization.