We are a consulting firm focused on evidence

Established in 2003, our focus is on rigorous methods to generate evidence to inform policy.

We start any assignment by gaining a thorough understanding of the challenges that our client has and tailoring solutions appropriately. We partner with our clients, to ensure that we are meeting their needs and transferring knowledge and building their capability every step of the way. We stay tuned to context and work flexibly to address emerging challenges and take advantage of opportunities.

We are a learning organisation, continually setting and achieving high standards in our work.

We pride ourselves on using evidence-based methods in all aspects of our work –  consulting with stakeholders, reviewing literature, collecting and analysing data, communicating results – and ensuring transparency in the conclusions that we draw.

300

Completed projects

120

Australian/international clients

20

years of success stories

Meet our team

Our strength is in our highly experienced team. Our consultants have direct experience in managing and leading health reform, programs and health services. We have a strategic and pragmatic appreciation of our clients’ and stakeholders’ challenges in any program area.

Say hello to the team at Health Policy Analysis.

Jim Pearse

Director

Jim set up HPA in 2003 following a career working in health and social policy within the public sector in New South Wales and the Northern Territory where he led the design and implementation of major reforms. Jim’s experience and deep understanding of the underlying policy issues has contributed to the success of HPA. Jim’s publications and research cover population-based resource allocation models, including the use of risk adjustment in capitation payment, the fiscal relationship between federal and state governments, activity-based funding and classifications, efficiency of hospitals, measurement of health system performance, and international comparison of health system performance. Jim has designed and directed evaluations of many high-profile, complex and multi-stakeholder programs, including the Health Care Homes Program, My Health Record, the PHN After Hours Program, and the National Tobacco Strategy.

Deniza Mazevska

Director

Deniza’s expertise includes evaluations, quality and safety and activity-based funding. She has led projects with a significant impact on health care policy in Australia and internationally.
Deniza has a strong interest in evidence-based health care and supports this in HPA’s work through drawing on high-quality research and generating evidence using robust methods.
Deniza previously held senior posts in the NSW government in health system performance and evaluation, and funding policy. She was also a lecturer at the University of Sydney where she taught local and international students about patient classification systems and their applications. She maintains an interest in teaching and currently regularly teaches in the Patient Classification Systems International “Summer School”, a residential program for health professionals responsible for implementing activity-based funding in their country.

Rhian Jones

Consultant

Rhian has recently arrived in Australia having lived and worked in England. After completing a degree in physiotherapy, Rhian worked as a practicing physiotherapist before taking up both operations and project management roles across a number of healthcare settings within the English National Health Service. She has been involved in a variety of transformational projects within the National Health Service, including those delivering new models of care, as well as the implementation of national initiatives and standards. Her most recent role was as a Service Manager for an innovative and complex hospital at home service at one of London’s major teaching hospitals.

Ben McElduff

Data Scientist

Ben is a data scientist with experience as an R programmer and health researcher. Ben currently works as a researcher at Australian Catholic University and, as part of a team that won the 2019 Vice Chancellor's staff excellence award for research, has co-authored a number of peer-reviewed papers on acute stoke care and nursing practice. At HPA, Ben has undertaken geographic modelling of chronic disease prevalence and contributed to internal systems to streamline access to government health and population data. Ben is completing a degree in mathematics at The University of Sydney and prior to his research career he worked in a medical device sales role in the dental industry.

Ian Brownwood

Senior Manager

Ian has extensive experience working in both policy and clinical capacities in the health, aged care and community care sectors. Most recently, Ian worked in Paris for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development within the Health Division. He led the Health Care Quality and Outcomes team that evaluates the comparative performance of OECD and collaborating country health systems. He has managed and contributed to a wide range of projects during his time at HPA including the evaluation of the PHN After Hours Program and the Indicators to Support Patient Safety Reporting project for the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.

Susan Mitchell

Data Scientist

Susan is a data scientist with highly developed skills in statistical modelling and in using R with tidyverse. She has extensive programming experience in Java and C++. Susan previously worked for Deutsche Bank in London developing a real-time trading system and in the telecoms industry both in Australia and the U.K. At HPA, she has worked extensively with health data to develop forecasting models and to analyse hospital and primary care activity in support of evaluation and health workforce planning projects. This involved both assessing levels of hospital utilisation and making use of estimates of disease prevalence to develop needs-based modelling methods.

Owen Cho

Senior Data Scientist

As an award-winning data visualisation practitioner and a certified R Shiny developer, Owen has expertise in communicating data products such as statistical modelling or machine learning with diverse stakeholders. Owen has used his skills in the context of healthcare by leading projects on activity projections, costing, health needs indices, and other data analysis. With business degrees from University of Cambridge and Seoul National University, he has 10 years of experience in business strategy, data analytics and project management.

Anne Jayamaha

Consultant

Anne is a registrar in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Anne has a wide range of health care experience, having worked in both large teaching hospitals in major cities and rural hospitals. In addition to a degree in medicine, Anne holds a degree in Law (LLB (Hons)) and a Masters in Public Administration (MPA). She also has extensive experience managing not-for-profit organisations, through her work as a board member for the UK charity Students for Kids International Projects, facilitating child health and welfare projects in developing countries.

Patrick McElduff

Principal Statistician

Patrick is a statistician with over 25 years experience working in biostatistics. He was a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Newcastle and spent 4 years at the University of Manchester in the UK. Patrick has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and retains a University of Newcastle conjoint professorial appointment. Patrick has used his expertise in applied statistical methods and wide knowledge of data sources in several projects in health and aged care including evaluations of the Rheumatic Fever Strategy and NSW specialist mental health service for older people and in work to support hospital and workforce planning for both federal and state governments.

Joel Tuccia

Senior Consultant

Joel has a background in exercise physiology and in law. He worked clinically for over 10 years across public, private, and not for profit sectors. During his time at HPA, he has consulted across a broad range of assignments and has led a number of evaluations of state and federal initiatives targeting the health of vulnerable peoples including the Australian Government Department of Health’s Integrated Team Care initiative and the evaluation of the NSW Ministry of Health’s response to Tranche One of the NSW Mental Health Reforms.

Eileen Robertson

Senior Manager

Eileen is a health economist with extensive experience in health policy development and implementation. She worked at a senior level in the UK Department of Health and subsequently in NHS England. She led teams delivering analysis and policy advice on a range of strategic and operational healthcare issues including primary care contracting, workforce planning and health system performance and finance. While at HPA, Eileen has managed projects reviewing the effect of financial incentives on the quality of hospital care and a major evaluation of the Primary Health Network After Hours Program on behalf of the Australian Government.

Ian Crettenden

Senior Manager

Ian worked in senior management roles within the federal government, most recently as State Manager SA/WA for the Department of Health, with responsibilities for stakeholder engagement and consultation across the aged care and health sectors. He brings a wealth of experience in the areas of health and aged care, and the role that data and analytical techniques can play in policy development and evaluation. Ian previously led the analytical team in the Department of Health working on variations in clinical care, innovative tools to assess health workforce needs and helped establish major improvements to the data infrastructure in the department.

Our partnerships

As well as the core HPA team, we have developed relationships with national and international experts that we can call on for expert advice in instances where we (and our clients) believe that it will benefit a project. We have drawn on our networks for expertise in specific specialties, public health and epidemiology, health insurance, information technology and human resources.

  • Social Research Centre
  • Bridge
  • Health Q Consulting
  • Inside Mind
  • PicNet
  • Accumed
  • UNSW Centre for Big Data Research in Health
  • UTS Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation
  • Lisle Health Collaborative
  • Tim Smyth Consulting

Our vision

We equip our clients to make the best decisions to improve the health and wellbeing of the population. We genuinely love the work that we do and won’t take on a project unless we are passionate about it, in which case, we give it our all. We strive to give voice to stakeholders, especially where relationships are uneven, and involve them in achieving project outcomes.

Contact us