Organisational structure
The Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA) is a Corporate Commonwealth Entity under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013.
IHACPA was established under the National Health Reform Act 2011, giving effect to the National Health Reform Agreement signed by the Australian Government and all states and territories in August 2011.
Under this agreement, IHACPA works in four priority areas to:
- perform IHACPA pricing functions
- refine and develop hospital classification systems
- refine and improve hospital costing
- develop hospital data requirements and collect data.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is responsible for the day‑to‑day management of IHACPA and its staff.
Alongside the Office of the CEO, there are a number of teams that support the core activities of IHACPA as presented in the IHACPA organisational structure provided below.
Analytics
The Analytics team is responsible for analysing and reporting on IHACPA’s activity data collections and providing insights which will improve data quality, identify variation and inform policy development and implementation. This includes analysing National Hospital Cost Data Collection (NHCDC) data, leading analytics for future funding models and developing the National Benchmarking Portal.
Classification
The Classification team work with clinical, technical and jurisdictional stakeholders to develop and maintain the clinical classifications, coding standards and business rules associated with the implementation of a nationally consistent activity based funding (ABF) framework for public hospital services.
The work of the team covers six work streams:
Corporate Services
The Office of the CEO supports the CEO and IHACPA in all corporate support services. These include secretariat services, ministerial, government and parliamentary matters, internal and external communication, stakeholder engagement, finance and procurement.
Data Acquisition
The Data Acquisition team works with states and territories to develop appropriate data specifications, and to acquire, validate and maintain data in the IHACPA information technology environment. The team provides analytical support to the various teams in the Data Analytics branch.
Hospital Costing
The Hospital Costing team works with stakeholders to coordinate the collection, validation, analysis and reporting of the NHCDC, in conjunction with states and territories and private hospitals. To ensure the NHCDC can continue to be a well-informed, evidence-based data collection, the Hospital Costing team also conduct specific costing studies.
Infrastructure
The Infrastructure team manages IHACPA’s computing resources used to deliver the national efficient price and national efficient cost, and provides support for technology-based projects at IHACPA.
Policy Development
The team develops ABF policies across the sections of the agency IHACPA, including matters relating to the Pricing Framework for Australian Public Hospital Services, the National Efficient Price Determination and National Efficient Cost Determination.
Pricing
The Pricing team develops the statistical models that underpin IHACPA’s determination of the national efficient price and the national efficient cost. It does this by developing costing models that best explain the expenditure of local hospital networks nationally, and applying the policies contained within IHACPA’s Pricing Framework for Australian Public Hospital Services.