Overview

The delivery and management of effective health services in regional, rural and remote areas faces a number of ongoing challenges.  For example, an ageing population in Australia requires health organisations to increase their capacity for aged care, while managing simultaneous challenges such as workforce shortages.  Health services research is a priority funding area for the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and promoting and maintaining good health is recognised as a national priority area by the Australian Research Council, highlighting the importance and relevance of this research.  Traditionally, health services management has been researched primarily from disciplinary approaches incorporating clinical perspectives, medical education and public health, amongst others.  Our research area (RA) combines these approaches with a number of business disciplines such as information technology, economics, marketing and management with a view to providing additional input and suggestions of different ways to approach the challenges of health services management.

Our research aims to provide a cross-disciplinary perspective that will seek to explore problems and challenges that the health industry faces and develop interventions for improving health service delivery at an individual, group and organisational level.

Our research will contribute to both scholarly knowledge and health industry practice in a number of ways.  Scholarly knowledge pertaining to health service delivery will be enhanced through a cross-disciplinary research approach through the input of researchers from diverse academic backgrounds.  By researching various facets of health service delivery, researchers within the RA are also contributing directly to national research priority areas.  From a practice perspective, the RA is able to provide information and advice to industry partners through roles on boards and committees, by communicating results of research, through assisting industry partners with developing capacity to recognise and research their own organisational problems, and through the development of organisationally-specific interventions aimed at enhancing health service delivery.