Plenary Speakers

Jamie Reid is a Principal of Finity Consulting. Jamie has worked in the insurance industry for 15 years, and manages Finity’s health insurance practice. He’s the Appointed Actuary of four Australian private health insurers of various sizes. He is also AA to a New Zealand health insurer, and works with APRA-regulated general insurers.

Jamie is a member of the Actuaries Institute Health Practice Committee, and a past convenor of that group.

Ignatius Li is a health actuary at Deloitte.  Over more than well over a decade he has helped a variety of clients from Australian health funds to the Singapore government.  In particular, he has dedicated a significant part of his career to advising the Singapore government on their national health insurance scheme, MediShield Life, the highlight of which has been its conversion to a compulsory scheme in 2015.  Ignatius is a strong believer in the actuarial profession and the role actuaries can bring to policy discussions such as in health.  

Hon Jillian Skinner was NSW Minister for Health for six years and Member of Parliament for 23 years. She has more experience in the health field than any other politician in Australia, having first been appointed Shadow Minister for Health in 1995. She served as the Deputy NSW Liberal Leader for six years and was the first stand-alone Minister for Medical Research in NSW.

In those roles Jillian created a more unified health sector by focussing on local decision making, boosting the clinical workforce and providing record recurrent spending to deliver tens of thousands more emergency department treatments, hospital admissions and elective surgeries.

Under her stewardship a massive infrastructure allocation meant hundreds of hospitals have been redeveloped, there has been a considerable boost to the roll out of IT to enable better connectivity between providers – including non-government – and to enhance remote telehealth.  This has included investment in electronic medical records enabling improvements in medication management and variation in treatments.

She was noted for her commitment to social policy programs including organ donation, pain management, improved palliative care and elimination of the transmission of HIV.

Dr Stephen Duckett is Director of the Health Program at the Melbourne-based think tank, Grattan Institute. He has held top operational and policy leadership positions in health care in Australia and Canada including as Secretary of what is now the Commonwealth Department of Health. He has a reputation for creativity, evidence-based innovation and reform in areas ranging from the introduction of activity-based funding for hospitals, to new systems of accountability for the safety of hospital care. An economist, he is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Associate Professor Anthony Lowe is Chief Executive Officer at Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor at Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University; Non-Executive Director at Ensemble Offspring; and a member of Actuaries Institute’s Leadership & Career Development and Public Policy Council Committees.

Prior to joining PCFA, Anthony was Chief Operating Officer at the National Breast Cancer Foundation. He has held senior executive positions in the financial services industry in Australia, the US and UK, ultimately becoming an Executive Director and Asia-Pacific business group leader at Mercer Wealth Solutions.

Anthony is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries (London).  He holds a PhD. in mathematical physics from the University of Southampton and a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and Master of Mathematics from the University of Cambridge.

Dr Bastian Seidel is the President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP).  Bastian is a partner and co-owner of a rural general practice in Tasmania’s Huon Valley, South West of Hobart. He joined the RACGP Tasmania board in 2009 and was elected deputy chair in 2011, becoming chair in 2015. Bastian studied medicine in Germany and South Africa and completed his vocational training as a GP in the United Kingdom in 2006. Bastian has been a supervisor for GP registrars and an RACGP examiner since 2007. He is a Clinical Professor at the University of Tasmania and Director of the National Asthma Council.

Richard Hurley's background is in traditional life and super actuarial business. In that time, he has learned that quality, service and cost factors can all be improved by exploring the information that underlies business and public sector organisations.

Since joining the federal Health Department, Richard has had the opportunity to explore how routinely collected health administration data can be used to drive policy development.

Richard has led work on health workforce planning, health system sustainability through Treasury’s periodic intergenerational reporting regime, and devising the model for activity based funding that determines the federal government’s funding of the country’s 750-odd public hospitals.

Richard's current work is proving the most exciting of his career: he feels fortunate to work with a young, highly talented team of data specialists and clinical matter experts, drawn from a range of disciplines. At last, the team has access to the big data tools and relevant expertise to develop insight, and understanding, of some of the wicked problems underlying public health policy development.

Mireille Campbell is an independent Actuarial Consultant that loves working in the Disability, Social Services and Public Health Funding sectors with a data and analytics focus.

Currently, she is working with the National Disability Insurance Agency on models to assist the agency implement the National Disability Insurance Scheme nationwide. She is also working with the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority on Safety and Quality and Mental Health projects.

Up until 2015 Mireille was a Director in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Actuarial practice. Her main achievements were achieved with the Commonwealth Agencies responsible for the implementation of the nationally based Activity Based Funding (ABF) approach: the establishment of the ABF model that was used by the National Health Funding Body to remunerate Local Hospital Networks, the establishment of the funding model used by Treasury in the Federal Budgets, and the Quality Assurance of the National Efficient Price models used by the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority.

Matthew Koce is CEO of hirmaa, the peak national industry body for 21 not-for-profit, member owned and community based health insurers covering the lives of over one million Australians.

Matthew was a member of the Federal Health Minister’s Industry Working Group on Private Health Insurance Prostheses Reform. The Working Group developed a blueprint for regulatory reform of prostheses that included the reconstitution of the PLAC and contributed to immediate savings of $86 million through a  10 per cent for cardiac devices and intraocular lenses and 7.5 per cent for hip and knee replacements, with further more substantive cuts and regulatory reform expected to follow as a direct consequence of the Working Group’s recommendations.

He is also a sitting member of the Private Health Ministerial Advisory Committee (PHMAC). The PHMAC was established by the Federal Health Minister in September 2016 to examine all aspects of private health insurance and provide government with advice on reforms. As a member of the PHMAC Matthew also sits on the PHMAC Working Group on Contracting and default benefits.

as a leading Private Health Insurer in Australia, Medibank is uniquely positioned to drive healthcare reform that will benefit not only their members but all Australians.

Linda is a registered medical practitioner with broad experience in senior executive roles across the health sector including in clinical research, the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors, general practice, population health and health policy.

Prior to joining Medibank, Linda was the Managing Director for Healthways Australia - a global population health company specialising in behaviour change programs to improve health and lower healthcare costs.

Sean Heng is the Senior Technical Advisor, DRG Development at the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority (IHPA). Previously as a Technical Manager, he advised the IHPA pricing team across all streams with regards to technical pricing issues and advancing methodology. He has lead the model development for the subacute stream for the National Efficient Price 2014-15 and provided technical support for the Australian Mental Health care Classification. Over the past 12 months, he has been the lead technical manager on the implementation of Safety and Quality measures in pricing and funding for public hospitals.

Sean previously worked as a senior consultant within the PwC Actuarial department where he was involved with the Private NHCDC data collection and providing technical support in the development of the acute stream for the National Efficient Price 2015-16. His interest in ABF and health ignited while working with various government health bodies at PwC.

Margaret Bennett is an experienced Health Executive who has worked across metropolitan and regional health sectors in WA, NSW and Victoria. Margaret is currently the CEO at Northeast Health Wangaratta.

She has a strong commitment to the leadership and development of innovative systems to enhance decision making and the improvement of care delivery in a regional setting.

Julia Cooper is a Principal of Finity, based in the Melbourne office. She leads Finity’s health analytics practice, applying her significant health care experience across clinical care, accident compensation, operational and strategic management and health consulting.

Julia has provided advice to health care providers both private and public. This includes reviews of patient management, evidence based care and performance management. She’s worked with some of Australia’s largest health care providers and is familiar with the opportunities and challenges within the sector and has a track record of delivering real value as new insights and/or outcomes focused and sustainable solutions.