Heath System ‘at risk’: Australian Medicine
The latest edition of Australian Medicine takes a look at Australia’s health system. Chair of the AMA Council of General Practice, Dr Brian Morton, reports that the health assessments fiasco is close to a resolution and columnist Professor Stephen Leeder delivers a stinging rebuke regarding the quality of policy making for primary care.
Other stories include: how the Federal Government’s wholesale changes to health care funding will dump an extra $10 billion of costs onto patients and put the health system at enormous risk; the strong push by private health insurers into primary health that could pave the way for US-style managed care; the future of GP training; collaboration between the AMA and the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia on ways to integrate pharmacists into GP-led primary care teams; and how GPs are putting diagnostic tools to good use as the number of patients and medical problems they treat has increased.