Access and affordability: the big health issues
AMA Supplementary Submission To The Senate Select Committee On Medicare
AMA President, Dr Bill Glasson, will tomorrow tell the Senate Select Committee on Medicare that access to and affordability of quality medical services are the big health issues worrying Australian patients, not the decline in bulk billing rates.
Dr Glasson will present the AMA's Supplementary Submission to the Senate Committee in Brisbane tomorrow.
"The number of doctors, especially GPs, is not keeping pace with the wants and the needs of a growing and ageing Australian population," Dr Glasson said today.
"The medical workforce shortage, which could result in a GP drought lasting a decade, is the result of poor medical workforce policies from successive governments throughout the 1990s.
"The disappointing Medicare policies currently on offer do not address the medical workforce shortage problems.
"Australia now faces a shortage of 2000 to 3000 full-time GPs, which is about 10-15 per cent of the GP workforce.
"This will be compounded by a severe maldistribution of GPs between city and country, an increasingly disaffected and disillusioned group of doctors, difficulty in recruiting GP trainees, and a trend for more doctors to work part-time, which will accelerate the falling GP participation rate.
"Patients will be severely disadvantaged as suburbs, towns and communities lose some or all their GPs.
"Regional Australia will be hardest hit as the typically older male GP retires and there are no young doctors coming through to take their place.
"Many communities will see the loss of something that every Australian once took for granted - accessible and affordable primary health care.
"The AMA urges the Government and the Opposition to produce Medicare policies that address the access and affordability issues and stop fiddling around the edges with a pointless debate about declining bulk billing rates.
"Both sides must now admit that bulk billing is disappearing because of their failed policies of the 1990s.
"It is time to move on and address the medical workforce shortage to ensure all Australians have equal access to high quality affordable medical services.
In its Supplementary Submission, the AMA will present the following practical solutions to the Senate Select Committee:
1: A further increase in medical student places and GP training places
2: The Medicare Benefits Schedule reflect actual costs
3: An increase in patient rebates that allows doctors to discount their charges to the rebate for needier patients.
4: Indexation of the MBS at a rate based on movements in the costs of medical practice.
5: Phasing out of most blended payment schemes except direct area of need and rural and remote support payments.
6: Major reductions in red tape.
7: Support for practice nurses in all areas.
8: A patient rebate that enables the GP to supervise and direct a practice nurse in the delivery of specific primary care activities.
9: Non VR GPs to receive full GP rebates.
10: Government Red Tape Review to analyse processes and barriers faced by overseas-trained doctors wishing to practice in Australia.
11: Targeted incentive schemes for areas of need and rural and remote practices.
12: Retention incentives for GPs aged 55 and over who continue full-time practice.
13: Scholarships for medical students.
14: Expansion of programs to attract rural students into medicine.
15: Elective supervised GP terms for pre-vocational RMOs.
16: Improved IT support.
More detail on these practical solutions is contained in the attached submission.
Dr Glasson and an AMA delegation will present the Supplementary Submission to the Senate Select Committee On Medicare from 11.15am, tomorrow, Tuesday 26 August 2003, in the Sherwood Room, Brisbane City Hall, King George Square, Brisbane.
CONTACT: John Flannery (02) 6270 5477 / (0419) 494 761
Judith Tokley (02) 6270 5471 / (0408) 824 306