Australian Medical Association

Two things have really pushed my buttons in the past week. If you've been keeping up to date with the news, you can probably guess what they are.

The first is the deal between the Pharmacy Guild of Australia and Blackmores to promote complementary medicines with prescription drugs.

The Guild’s withdrawal of the deal and its endorsement of the Blackmores Companion range of complementary medicines is a win for patients, a win for the independence of clinical pharmacists, and a win for the doctor-clinical pharmacist relationship.

The second button-pusher has been the obvious absence of health at this week's Tax Forum in Canberra.

To find out what your AMA has been doing in these areas, you can read more here.

Doctors will have recently received an information pack from the Department of Human Services (DHS) about the requirements to produce documents to substantiate Medicare billing that came into effect in April 2011. Many of you will probably also be aware of the Senate inquiry into the Professional Services Review (PSR).

The AMA has been very active in both these areas to ensure that both Medicare and the PSR operate in the best interests of the profession.

To find out what your AMA has been doing in these areas, you can read more here.

Health Budget 2011-12 – Another Hit to Family Doctors and Patients

The big story in this year’s Health Budget was mental health.  Mental health advocates got behind the Government’s package, which was billed as $2.2 billion over five years. 

The reality is that the ‘new’ spending is just $650 million over five years, with the bulk of it not being spent until the final two years, 2014-15 and 2015-16.

But here is the sting.  The money is being shifted from a successful mental health initiative – the Better Access program – to fund other mental health services.  The AMA supports initiatives to deliver mental health services to those who are currently missing out.

But, put simply, GPs and their mental health patients are being penalised and disadvantaged in order to fund the new package.

The Problems With Medicare Locals

The AMA has gone public with a position of strong opposition to the Government’s Medicare Locals as currently proposed.

We have called on the Government to defer the establishment of any primary health care organisations (PHCO) until there has been genuine consultation with the medical profession.

The AMA has for some time been calling for consultation and more detail about the governance and operation of Medicare Locals, but those calls have been met with silence.

The AMA cannot support primary care reforms that do not explain how they would benefit patients or communities, and which do not guarantee they would maintain and support the leadership role of GPs in primary care.

During February, there was a COAG meeting and a meeting of Health Ministers, and we witnessed something very rare – agreement from all our governments on the need for health reform. Better still, it looks like we have agreement on the financing of the hospital system and a re-commitment to local decision-making.

This has been a long time coming. Not everybody agrees with every element of the Agreement, and that is no surprise. Health is like that.

Change is needed. To leave things as they are would be a dereliction of duty by all our politicians and all of us who work in the health system. To do nothing would be a betrayal of the patients who need quality health services.

It is now our job – the AMA and the medical profession – to be vigilant with the COAG Agreement to ensure the reforms are the right reforms.

We are currently seeing too many medical graduates around the country missing out on intern places. At the moment they are mainly international students. Without action, pretty soon it will be local homegrown graduates who will be missing out too. Our health system cannot afford that waste. Too many communities have no doctors or too few doctors.

The Commonwealth Government has done the right thing in recent years by increasing the number of prevocational and vocational positions. All governments must now work with the profession to create the intern places to cater for this increased number of students in the system.

However, things are moving too slowly.

Like the rest of the nation, we are still waiting to see who will form minority Government following the tightest election since 1961.

Regardless of the outcome, there is no doubt about the level of influence that the AMA had on health policy leading into and during the election campaign

Our Key Health Issues document and our regular media commentary on the election commitments not only helped shape the major parties’ policies, it influenced the media and public reaction to those policies.

The important thing for the AMA is that we remained engaged with both sides of politics. We had direct contact with Prime Minister Gillard, Opposition Leader Abbott, Health Minister Roxon, Shadow Health Minister Dutton, and their advisers. As a result, we had more influence on the health policies of both sides of politics than any other organisation leading up to the election.

The next Government must make a significant investment in the MBS in order to stop shifting more and more of the cost of health care on to patients.

The Coalition has announced its health policy and we can now begin examine the action that both sides are taking to move the health agenda forward over the next term of Government.

The AMA recognises that there are many aspects of the Coalition’s plan that show it has listened to the concerns of the AMA and the medical profession and has responded in ways that we have to be happy about.

The AMA has been calling on the Government to review its GP Super Clinics program since it became a reality after the 2007 Federal election.