Australian Medical Association

The AMA conducted a survey of its members in January 2012 to ensure that the draft Guide to Using PCEHR is as useful and relevant to practising medical practitioners as possible. Responses were used to prioritise and inform the guidance given in the document.

The Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record System (the PCEHR) is an Australian Government program to provide Australians with a system of access to health information relating to consumers of healthcare.

The AMA has drafted the AMA Guide to Using the PCEHR to assist medical practitioners to consider if they want to participate in the PCEHR system and if so, how they might use the PCEHR in their day-to-day practice.

The AMA submission to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee inquiry into AHPRA highlights that the administrative failure by AHPRA to properly plan for and coordinate the transition to national registration has had a detrimental effect on individual medical practitioners, and on services to patients.  In failing to ensure that every medical practitioner transitioned smoothly to national registration, AHPRA failed to act in the public interest.  Patient care was put at risk because medical practitioners could not work.

The AMA is supportive of evidence-based guidelines for the prevention and control of infection that are appropriate for the level of risk applicable to the various healthcare settings.

A national approach must be sufficiently flexible to accommodate the relative risks. The AMA is not in support of an approach where healthcare providers are required to implement infection control guidelines that are beyond the level of risk that occurs in a particular healthcare setting, are not practical to implement, and/or for which there is no evidence to justify adherence to the guideline.

AMA Submission to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee on the Healthcare Identifiers Bill 2010 and Healthcare Identifiers (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2010

The AMA considers healthcare identifiers are an essential building block towards the implementation of electronic health records, and we are therefore a strong supporter of their introduction. Healthcare identifiers will facilitate the secure access to, and appropriate sharing of, electronic patient information by healthcare providers.

We support the passage of the Healthcare Identifiers Bill 2010 and the Healthcare Identifiers (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2010.

Establishment of the Healthcare Identifier Service was agreed to by the Council of Australian Governments in 2006 as part of the national approach towards accelerating work on electronic health records to improve the safety of patients and improve efficiency for healthcare providers.

In July 2009, the Department of Health and Ageing released a discussion paper on legislative proposals to support the establishment and implementation of unique identifiers for healthcare purposes and the privacy of health information.

The AMA submission on the discussion paper is supported by the AMA Position Statement on Unique Healthcare Identifiers in 2008.

MJA Media Release - An open letter to the Health Minister from an outback GP

An Alice Springs doctor has urged the Federal Government to overhaul Medicare to remove disincentives for General Practitioners to conduct longer consultations with patients.
An open letter from Dr Susan Wearne to the Federal Minister for Health, the Hon. Nicola Roxon MP, is published in this year’s General Practice edition of the Medical Journal of Australia.
Dr Wearne said Medicare effectively discourages GPs from spending the time with patients needed to obtain comprehensive histories and carry out thorough examinations.

The AMA submission to the Senate Community Affairs Committee inquiry into the Health Insurance Amendment (Extended Medicare Safety Net) Bill 2009 highlighted:

• the Bill provides a framework for the Government to systematically withdraw its funding of the Extended Medicare Safety Net (EMSN);
• the shortcomings of the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation Extended Medicare safety net review report 2009 upon which the Government’s decisions to cap certain services were based;
• the absence of Government consultation with the medical profession to determine the real impact on patients.

The AMA called for the Bill to be amended to include the following requirements:

• that the Minister be required to consult with the relevant medical groups about their fee structures and any proposal to introduce and/or change a EMSN cap before making future determinations to impose EMSN caps on particular medical services;
• that the Government be required to commission an independent evaluation of the impact of this measure and the associated determination containing the 2009-10 Budget caps by 1 January 2012, and for the evaluation to be tabled in Parliament as soon as it is completed.

The AMA has provided a submission to the Commission, highlighting the impact of Government regulation, guidelines and rules on the operation of medical practices. The AMA submission argues that medical practices are burdened with unnecessary red tape, particularly as a result of deliberate efforts by Governments to ration the number of services that patients can access and thus contain health costs.

AMA Position Statement: Ethical Considerations for Medical Practitioners in Public Health Emergencies in Australia - 2008