The TAC funds healthcare services that facilitate rehabilitation and recovery after a transport accident to help clients get their life back on track. Consistent with the TAC's strategic direction, TAC 2025, the TAC is offering innovation grants funding to encourage health service providers to make shifts towards value-based healthcare.

The grant program aims to incentivise health service providers to implement innovative projects that embrace the principles of value-based healthcare. We are looking for projects that address an area of priority for people with transport accident injuries and will build capability in developing integrated care pathways, using risk screening and outcomes data to inform clinical decisions and improve care, and measure the efficiency of care.

Value-based healthcare is a patient-centric approach that seeks to support the delivery of health outcomes at a sustainable cost. There are four key principles underpinning value-based healthcare:

1. The outcomes that matter to the patient
2. The patient’s experience of care
3. The provider’s experience of care
4. The effectiveness and efficiency of care

Value-based healthcare gives patients more say in their treatment options and empowers them to identify and achieve the goals that matter most to them.

Providers communicate and work closely together in integrated multidisciplinary teams, with the patient at the centre. Patients who have similar needs, injuries or conditions are identified. The provider team then designs and delivers solutions to address those needs through the delivery of high value interventions and outcomes. They measure the health outcomes and costs for each patient and use that information to drive ongoing improvements.

As a result, the patient achieves the desired outcomes and has a better experience of care. This translates into a better experience for the provider as well – with higher levels of job fulfilment stemming from better-informed and more-satisfied patients.

With this focus on outcomes, collaboration and data sharing, a Value-based Healthcare approach ultimately delivers care more effectively and efficiently, with greater value for cost.

To inform your application the TAC strongly encourages viewing these resources for more information on value-based healthcare:

• TAC, Value-based healthcare
• Australian Centre for Value Based Healthcare
• World Economic Forum, The Moment of Truth for Healthcare Spending

This grant program offers grants of up to $150,000 (ex. GST).

To be eligible for funding you must be Victorian based, financially viable and one of the following health service related provider groups:

1. Hospitals – includes pre-hospital clinics and surgeons
2. Rehabilitation services – includes inpatient and outpatient services
3. Post-hospital services – includes early discharge and post-acute care type services
4. Primary health care services – includes General Practitioners, Primary Health Networks and community based Allied Health services
5. Pain management service providers
6. Disability service providers
7. Peak Bodies*
8. Professional Societies*

*Must be collaborating with a setting from 1 – 6.

Applicants must nominate a Chief Investigator who will be responsible for submitting the application, conducting the project, and reporting as required under the Funding Agreement.

The TAC will accept multiple applications from a single organisation, however each application must nominate a different Chief Investigator to lead each project and the projects must be inherently different.

Funding will be prioritised for small-scale projects that align with helping TAC clients get their life back on track. You are invited to submit an application for projects that:

• Address at least two of the principles of VBHC (Highly desirable: projects targeting the effectiveness and efficiency of care)
• Demonstrate innovation in health care; the project creates a new or significantly changes an existing method, process or service
• Focus on a topic of importance to TAC clients with traumatic physical and/or mental health injuries
• Use existing evidence, outcomes data sets, codesign and information technology platforms to improve care pathways and better integrate care
• Shadow test and validate alternative commercial fee models such as bundled payments
• Consider social determinants of health such as the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse populations, or people living in rural or remote areas
• Can be measured, evaluated and incorporate global health measures such as the EQ-5D

Applications to fund the project in part and in full will be accepted.

Successful applicants must comply with relevant legislation and professional standards to ensure the research is ethical, conducted with integrity and scientifically sound.

Applications can be submitted from 26 April to 2 June 2023.

To prepare your application, access the program guidelines and application questions.

To submit and manage your application, please access the SmartyGrants platform at the link below.

Apply for Value-based Healthcare Innovation Grant

You can contact the TAC Research & Evaluation team at research@tac.vic.gov.au if you need support preparing your application.

Six projects have commenced from the 2022 Value-based Healthcare Grant Program. Those projects underway include:

• Northern Health: Co-design, implementation and evaluation of an innovative digital care pathway for patients presenting to the emergency department with back pain.
• The University of Sydney: Pilot testing an early intervention to mitigate distress in motor vehicle accident claimants identified as being at risk of developing chronic pain – an acceptability and feasibility study.
• Melbourne Health: Improving care continuity for pelvic trauma with a screening and referral process from the acute setting into the community, to decrease the prevalence and severity of Pelvic Floor Dysfunction (PFD).
• Epworth Healthcare: The value of multi-trauma rehabilitation on patient health-related quality of life.
• Epworth Healthcare: Investigating the effectiveness of a vocational rehabilitation (VR) smartphone application to support return to work after traumatic brain injury (TBI).
• Monash University: Co-designing CYBERABILITY, a cyberscam recovery intervention for TAC clients with brain injury.