AIHW General Practice Activity in Australia Report

AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, says the latest GP Activity Report “not only reinforces the leading role of GPs in primary care, but shows that GPs are becoming increasingly more important as the population has a higher incidence of chronic disease that needs to be managed in the community”.  The clear message is that GPs are in higher demand and need greater support to help them to continue providing the high quality holistic care that patients need and expect. To assist GPs, the AMA is calling for practical action that includes:

• reviewing and simplifying Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) GP items to enable patients to receive rebates appropriate to, and reflective of, the high quality
• acute care, complex care, chronic disease management and preventive care provided in general practice (as confirmed by the AIHW report);
• providing greater support for practice nurses who play a critical role in general practice in Australia – such as improved MBS arrangements to support a broader range of work to be undertaken by GP practice nurses and expanding practice nurse grants to all geographic locations in Australia;
• providing GP infrastructure grants to build on the existing valuable network of general practice throughout Australia – to fund space for teaching/training and to allow practices to provide comprehensive multidisciplinary care on-site in the practice;
• providing continued growth in GP training positions – the Government has funded extra training places but more are needed; and
• ensuring that other health professionals work collaboratively with GPs, not independently, to promote continuity of holistic care for patients.

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Swine Flu Update

On 3 December the Federal Government announced that TGA has now approved the pandemic flu vaccine for children from 6 months to 9 years of age (with children 10 years and over already approved and accessing the vaccine under previous approval arrangements). There has been no confirmation yet about how the vaccine will be distributed to children, although we understand that, given that the school year is nearly finished, the government is hoping that vaccinations for children over the next few months will largely be offered through GP surgeries along with the pandemic vaccination for adults. The government's communication to the community is expected encourage families to take advantage of these arrangements.  The AMA will continue to liaise with the Federal Government about these arrangements, including the distribution of Panvax Junior to general practices.  Once available, we will post the latest technical advice to the profession about vaccinations for children on the dedicated H1N1 area of the federal AMA's website at http://www.ama.com.au/node/4591

Review  of RACGP Standards

The AMA this week provided a submission to the RACGP Review of Standards for General Practices (Revised 3rd edition). The AMA Submission recommends that the RACGP:

• Ensure the Standards continue to facilitate quality improvements in general practice;
• Only include new standards that are proven to have significant benefit to the quality of patient care in comparison to the time, cost and other impacts on practices in meeting them;
• Simplify, rather than downgrade or remove, existing standards where required;
• Ensure the Standards continue to reflect real world practice and do not become idealistic and prescriptive; and
• Ensure that any requirement around clinical indicators is appropriately used as a method of continuous improvement in the practice by individual doctors and not implemented in such a way as to allow it to be linked to pay for performance initiatives.

The AMA looks forward to reviewing and providing additional comments as the RACGP develop their 4th edition of Standards of General Practice.