Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President - Radio 2MC FM, Port Macquarie, with Mark Strachan

STRACHAN: What do you think of the 'Holiday Coast', pretty, on a day like today?

PHELPS: Fabulous day, today.

STRACHAN: Your position, the AMA President, a real hot seat position, was it as tough as you thought it would be?

PHELPS: Yes it was, and I was just determined to make sure that the issues that were important to the health system, to the doctors working in the health system, and to our patients, were brought to the fore, particularly for this election, I think it is a very important time for health in this country.

STRACHAN: Okay for those of us on the 'Holiday Coast', and the fact here, over one in three people are over the age of 55 and, as you know, to them health is so very much important as far as their location, if their close to a hospital, etcetera, etcetera. We've had an interesting ten years or so, since I have been here, with the privitatisation of a public hospital in Port Macquarie. Also, we had that terrible death of an elderly lady in the psychiatric section of the Kempsy District Hospital, and a lack of doctors in the Laurieton area. What can we do, with encouraging doctors to come to the country, and what can the Government do?

PHELPS: It's not a simple solution, but I think it's one that governments do need to talk to the medical profession about. I mean, we had a big meeting last night, with the doctors in Port Macquarie. I met with the doctors down at Laurieton yesterday at lunch time, and one of the problems that is very difficult to overcome, particularly in the smaller rural centres, is that you can just have one doctor going to the town, because that creates such a tremendous workload for that one doctor, that they burn out, they have no lifestyle. And, so, you have to be looking at a group of doctors in a town, or going into a town. One of the things that has happened in Laurieton is that they have lost quite a number of their doctors down there, so that those who are left, I spoke to a couple of them yesterday - are doing a one in two roster, which is pretty difficult.

It is a very difficult thing to be on call 24 hours every second day. One of the issues in terms of - so that is one issue, the lifestyle. Another issue is, for example, education of your children. Now, some people will say, 'Well when my kids get to high school years, what do I do?, Do I send the kids away to boarding school, do we then leave the country?" And also, if you've got a doctor coming to a town, you have to think about what their partner wants to do. Because, if their partner is a career person your thinking, 'Is it going to suit them?, will they want to move to the country from the city?', and it doesn't suit everybody. So that's an issue too. But if you're looking at an area like Port Macquarie, the frustration for a lot of the specialists, particularly working in the area, is things like simply getting enough operating time. You know, they come here to do their orthopaedics. They might get for example, one session a month to do their artificial joints.

Now, there is a waiting time of 3 to 5 years for artificial joints in Port Macquarie, where as if you were in Sydney you might only wait a few months. Now, this is the sort of thing that's flustrating for the doctors, because they are there ready to do the work, their passionate, they're interested, they have the skills, they have the experience, they can't get the operating time, or they don't have the facilities. For example, you know, we have a renal physician, a kidney specialist here in Port Macquarie, but they have no dialysis at the base hospital. There is a few dialysis beds at the community centre, but no dialysis at the base hospital, and yet, this area has the highest number of people of needing dialysis in Australia.

STRACHAN: It is easy to identify problems I've identified a couple, you've identified a couple. Is it as simple as throwing money at it? What should the Government be doing? What's the solution?

PHELPS: Anyone who says it's not as simple as throwing money at it, is not really looking at the solution because yes, it is as simple as making sure the system is firstly, adequately funded, and secondly, properly administered. So, if we go to the first one, our public hospitals are under-funded. A Senate review, last year, found that we need an extra $450 million dollars in to the system over the next couple of years. Now that should be shared by the Commonwealth and the States. We need to sort out whose responsibility it is to pay for the health system. Areas like aged care fall between the cracks because it's supposed to be Commonwealth funded, but because there are not enough aged care places, it falls on the State Governments and the acute care hospitals to have to accommodate people when they are no longer able to look after themselves. So then, there is this fight between the Commonwealth and States as to who is to pay for what. So that's a frustrating too, in the system. So it is about funding, but it's also about administration, and over the last 20 years that I have been in the medical profession, I've seen a progressive de-medicalisation of administration. So it means the people who running the health system, running the hospitals, are less likely to have experience of that system from working in the system, point of view.

STRACHAN: I don't think that's only with the medical profession, that's with anything. If we start running it from the top down, not the bottom up we are going to get that. Okay, how can you help us identify which party is going to be best for us, if we are worried about health?

PHELPS: I want people to listen to what the parties and the candidates have to say. What I want them to listen for is, what they are going to do about this funding situation for public hospitals? What are they going to really do about aged care? Now, it's not good enough to just to say, 'We are announcing more funded places', because the funding for each aged care place is not enough for the providers to actually take up those positions and actually provide them for elderly people. So we have these 'phantom beds' running around at the moment, and that's not doing anybody any good. We want to see real policies that are going to address the problems in general practice. So what people can do between now, and the election is to listen to the AMA's response to the policies as they come out of the major parties.

STRACHAN: Okay

PHELPS: And if the policies are not satisfactory to us, I will certainly let them know on an issue-by-issue basis.

STRACHAN: Alright Kerryn, thanks very much for your time this morning. Now, what do you do to relax? Its obviously a high pressure job you've got here, and all these media commitments, of course, having a real care about the people of Australia and trying to improve the health system, what do you do to relax?

PHELPS: It depends on how much time I have. I like to go to the beach, I like to walk, I like to exercise, swim, read, go to a movie.

STRACHAN: Well, you'll enjoy yourself here. You should come here and have a holiday, we'd love to have you back again. Thanks for that, good luck with it, and like most people, especially our 'Holiday Coast' residents, where health is such an important issue. We'll be very interested to see the AMA's responses to the policies when they come out, even if they're on or not on websites then whatever. Thank you very much Dr Phelps. Thanks very much for coming in.

PHELPS: Thanks very much.

Ends