Australian Medical Association

The AMA submission to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons highlights that: urgency categories should facilitate patients being prioritised for surgery fairly and equitably; category definitions should take account of all the factors relevant to a patient's requirement for surgery; the primary driver for surgeons to categorise elective surgery will always be clinical urgency; and elective surgery waiting time should be counted from the time the patient is referred by a general practitioner to a surgeon for assessment until the time surgery is performed.

The AMA's submission to the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority on a pricing framework for public hospital services calls for hospital services to be funded on the basis of an 'effective' rather than an 'efficient' price. An effective price is one that provides sustainable and equitable access to high quality hospital services. The submission details the AMA's support for appropriate funding of post-hospital care; investment in teaching, training and research; and small and medium sized hospitals.

On 2 August 2011, the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments finalised the National Health Reform Agreement. A summary of the Agreement's key points can be found here.

The AMA has made an additional submission to the Department of Health and Ageing to raise concerns identified by AMA member junior doctors. This submission:

• emphasises the need to ensure that time-based targets do not impact on the ability of public hospitals to provide quality clinical education and training;
• calls for ongoing resources to support the ability of emergency departments, the hospital and community providers to fulfil education and training obligations; and
• recommends that the monitoring and evaluation of the impact of targets also includes the impact on education, training and junior doctor experiences.

This submission supplements the submission lodged by the AMA on 25 May 2011.

The AMA has made a submission to the Department of Health and Ageing, on the implementation of elective surgery and emergency department targets, which strongly advocates for an evidence-based approach to implementation. The AMA supports measures to improve the timeliness and quality of patient care in public hospitals but cautions against imposing arbitrary time-based targets that may carry more risks than potential benefits if they are not slowly, carefully and cautiously implemented.

AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, said today that the Government’s spending on public hospitals has delivered a very small return on a huge investment over four years, with the hospitals effectively being held in a holding pattern.

Dr Pesce said that the latest hospitals report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows that on all the basic measures there has been no real change in the capacity of our public hospitals to meet demand.

“There has not been much bang for the extra bucks spent on our hospitals,” Dr Pesce said.

The AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2010 is an analysis of the most recent publicly available national data on public hospital performance plus more recent feedback from doctors working in public hospitals in all States and Territories.

There has been little improvement in public hospital capacity and performance despite significant extra Commonwealth funding as part of the National Healthcare Agreement and specific funding for an elective surgery ‘blitz’.

AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2010 - AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, said today that there had been little improvement in public hospital capacity and performance despite significant extra Commonwealth funding as part of the National Healthcare Agreement and specific funding for an elective surgery ‘blitz’.

The AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2010 is an analysis of the most recent publicly available national data on public hospital performance plus more recent feedback from doctors working in public hospitals in all States and Territories.

This position statement sets out the principles the AMA considers should underpin the national introduction of time-based targets for public hospital emergency departments (EDs) in order that patient safety and outcomes, quality of care and the training of doctors are not compromised.

AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, said today that Labor’s emergency department package is a welcome boost to the pressured and overworked emergency departments in our public hospitals.

Dr Pesce said the new investment will increase the medical and nursing resources in emergency departments and provide a modest number of additional training opportunities in this area of medical workforce shortage for the additional cohort of medical students who are graduating from medical schools over the next few years.

“Emergency departments are at the frontline of public hospital services,” Dr Pesce said.