AMA Family Doctor Week 2010

This week is AMA Family Doctor Week. Family Doctor Week acknowledges the vital work of family doctors in caring for the community. This year’s event falls during an intense health reform debate and at the start of the Federal Election campaign. It provides a timely opportunity to discuss how the health system can provide GPs with the support they need to continue delivering high-quality care to patients.

Find out more from the AMA’s Family Doctor Week webpage.

AMA launches patient petition to urge major parties to support family doctors

The AMA has launched a petition for patients to sign at their local medical practice to urge the major parties to produce election policies that will support family doctors to continue serving their communities.
Posters, brochures and petitions are being made available to practices around the country and more information about the campaign and how to obtain copies can be obtained by clicking here.

AMA releases health policy platform for Election 2010

On Wednesday, the AMA released Key Health Issues for the 2010 Federal Election – a summary of the major health issues that the AMA considers must be addressed by the major parties during the election campaign. General practice issues feature heavily in our election document, including MBS reform, simplification and indexation, slashing red tape, GP infrastructure funding and GP-referred MRI. [Read more]

Practice nurse policy needs constructive consultation to be fully effective – AMA survey

An AMA survey has revealed that the Government’s extra funding to support general practices to employ practice nurses has the potential to be a success with family doctors, but would be made far more effective through genuine consultation with the profession over the design and implementation of proposed arrangements to roll this funding out.

Nearly half of the general practices that participated in the survey said that they were likely to be worse off as a result of the changes.  [Read more]

AMA President addresses National Press Club

AMA President Dr Andrew Pesce, addressed the National Press Club on Wednesday. Read Dr Pesce’s address here.  Dr Pesce also answered questions from the media. You can read the transcript here.

Diabetes Advisory Group – decision without consultation or negotiation

Dr Pesce says the announcement of the Diabetes Advisory Group is another example of the Government announcing flawed policy before engaging in a proper process of consultation and negotiation with all the key players. Dr Pesce said that failure to engage in genuine consultation with the AMA over its serious concerns with the proposed plan for care for people with diabetes is a snub to doctors and their patients with diabetes.  [Read more]

Other top stories in Family Doctor Week

·    Choice of family doctor - preserving and protecting the doctor-patient relationship
·    Family doctors - highly trained, highly skilled
·    Medicare needs 'real action' to 'move forward' to better serve patient needs
·    ALP commitment to PBS 'authority prescription' changes a step in the right direction
·    Patients want more time with their family doctors

Family Doctor Week in the Medical Journal of Australia

·    Practice co-location with pathology centres has no effect on GP test ordering
·    Divisions of General Practice - foggy future ahead
·    MBS reforms unlikely to have great impact on GP consultation patterns
·    Rural and metro GPs report similar levels of job satisfaction

Specialist register update

National registration of medical practitioners came into effect on 1 July 2010. Specialist registration is available to medical practitioners who are recognised by the relevant specialist college as being eligible for fellowship.

The Medical Board of Australia (MBA) has confirmed that when a medical practitioner was recognised as a specialist by the relevant college as at 30 June 2010, they are deemed to have specialist registration in the relevant specialty. Medical practitioners are not required to make a fresh application to have their name placed on the specialist register.

For those GPs whose specialist registration status may not yet be appearing correctly on the MBA’s public register, they are deemed by the MBA to be a specialist if they meet the specialist criteria, regardless of whether they are recorded on the public register. This applies to fellows of the RACGP and GPs with vocational registration. Further information is available from the Medical Board of Australia.