Kathy Eagar

Kathleen Margaret Eagar, known as Kathy Eagar, is an Australian clinician and health services academic, who was awarded an Order of Australia in 2024 for services to health services. She was professor of health services research at the University of Wollongong until 2023. She led the design of the Australian National Aged Care Classification, and contributed to the Aged Care Royal commission held in Australia.

Education and career
Eagar received her degree at the University of Wollongong, where she was a professor at the Australian Health Services Research Institute from 1998 to 2023.

She has published numerous publications on palliative and end of life care, policy and research around better health care, chronic diseases and aged care.

Eagar was the Director of the Centre for Health Service Development, with research focussed around outcomes, information systems, management and quality of health and community care systems in New Zealand and Australia.

Eagar commented that the main audience to which health services research should be focussed would ideally be politicians and consumers: "A key feature of health services research is that we have blurred the distinctions between investigation-driven research and priority-driven research. The issues that drive researchers are also important to patients and the community more generally. This makes our research more relevant and because health services are important to people and have a high political profile, we can follow current trends by reading the media."Eagar was also one of the subject matter experts who contributed to the 2024 Special Commission of Inquiry into Healthcare Funding.

She is an Honorary Fellow of the Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine (Royal Australasian Collage of Physicians) and adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales and Queensland University of Technology.

Publications
Eagar written over 500 publications, with over 4,000 citations, as at July 2024 and an H-index of 35. Select publications include:


 * Eagar Kathy, Watters Prue, Currow David C., Aoun Samar M., Yates Patsy (2010) The Australian Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC) – measuring the quality and outcomes of palliative care on a routine basis. Australian Health Review 34, 186–192.
 * Green, J.P. and Eagar, K. (2010), The health of people in Australian immigration detention centres. Medical Journal of Australia, 192: 65–70.
 * Eagar, K.; Gordon, R.; Hodkinson, A.; Green, J.; Eagar, L.; Erven, J.; Eckstein, G.; Spooner, G.; Kennedy, C.; Owen, A.; Cromwell, D.; Leotta, T.; and Rigley, A., "The Australian National Sub-Acute and Non-Acute Patient Classification (AN-SNAP): Report of the National Sub-Acute and Non-Acute Casemix Classification Study" (1997). Centre for Health Service Development - CHSD. Paper 7. http://ro.uow.edu.au/chsd/7

Awards

 * 2024 - Order of Australia.
 * 2015 - HSRAANZ Professional award for health services.