Australia's health system often rewards illness rather than health, a consumer health advocate says.
Consumers Health Forum chief executive Carol Bennett said what older Australians want and receive from health services are often very different things.
Ms Bennett told an aged care forum at the National Press Club on Tuesday that surveys showed more than two thirds of older Australians want to die at home; yet two thirds actually died in a clinical setting.
People with dementia struggled to get a timely diagnosis and received poor hospital care.
"It is difficult to meet the health needs of older Australians when our health system tends to be an inflexible process-driven system focused on acute care in hospital rather than community care," Ms Bennett said.
"We may well be rewarding failure and punishing success.
"In some ways our health system currently rewards illness, not health, by paying for activity or simply counting outputs."
Ms Bennett said health should be redefined, moved beyond the vested interests that drive many decisions with the needs of all health consumers at the centre of all health care services.
