Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President

JOURNALIST: Well, I guess the hot issue at the moment is the state of the public hospital system. Do you think that the debate that we're seeing in Parliament with regards to Hannah Beazley will enhance the issue in the minds of the public?

PHELPS: I think the important thing about the debate that's happening in Parliament at the moment is focusing the politicians' minds on what is happening in the public hospital system. The situation with Hannah Beazley is the situation that is being repeated for families all over Australia, every day of the week. And the concerns the medical profession and the AMA have about the public hospitals is that they are under-funded, they are under-resourced and people are having to wait unacceptable lengths of time for appropriate treatment. Now, my understanding is, in this particular case, that appropriate acute care was provided and there was going to be a wait until the next day for the proper surgical management. Now, while that might be not unsafe, it's certainly not desirable for somebody to have to wait to the next day to have their appendix removed when they have been diagnosed with acute appendicitis. Now, if we have a look at a range of other conditions, we're looking at elderly people having to wait in pain for three to five years to have a knee or a hip replaced, that's unacceptable. What we need to do is to focus on national standards of treatment of Australians in our public hospitals. We don't have national standards in our public hospitals at the moment. We need to look at appropriate resourcing. I would like to see our public hospitals treated as a national treasure and not as a political football, and that's what we're seeing at the moment.

JOURNALIST: The Prime Minister has been promoting figures all week in Parliament showing health funding from the Commonwealth has increased substantially under his government. Is that your reading of the figures?

PHELPS: We're getting sick to death of hearing about blame-shifting between the Commonwealth and State Governments, and the States back to the Commonwealth. Sooner or later, somebody, everybody, has to take responsibility, so that we don't see this blame-shifting going back between State and Commonwealth Governments. Now, what I've been hearing in Parliament is the Commonwealth blaming the States for not spending enough on hospitals. When I visit the States, I hear them blaming the Commonwealth for inadequate funding. What I would like to see is a bipartisan approach, a team approach to looking at the problems in our public hospitals and to finding real solutions. The problems and the solutions are in the key election issues document that the AMA has produced. Public hospital overcrowding and under-resourcing is one of the key issues, and we would like to see that dealt with in a practical manner, not in a political dog fight.

JOURNALIST: Do you think that effective debate about health issues is being derailed by personal attacks between Dr Wooldridge and Mr Beazley?

PHELPS: I am distressed by the personal attacks, but what I will say is that health is personal. It does get personal and when you look at people who are waiting for treatment in our public hospitals, waiting on elective surgery lists, they are all somebody's son, somebody's daughter, someone's mother or father. It does get personal, that's the way health is. And I think if you have to have a personal experience to realise what the medical profession has been saying about the problems in the public hospital system, then that will have been a good illustration of what Australians all around this country have been experiencing.

JOURNALIST: So, Mr Beazley did the right thing by bringing his daughter in?

PHELPS: Well, I think you can't help but feel personally when you have a problem with somebody in your own family. I mean, lots of politicians have done it over the years, and I don't see why this is any different. And I think it's important that our politicians do actually have some personal experience of our hospital system. Visit the hospitals, visit the aged care facilities and if you have a personal issue within your family, then, I think it does actually guide the way you develop policy. So, I don't have any problem with there being a personal focus on this particular issue, because doctors are seeing the personal focus every day of the week.

JOURNALIST: Didn't it make your colleagues look like butchers, who turned people away? That's certainly what it looked like at first.

PHELPS: No, I don't believe it did. I think what we saw was doctors who had behaved appropriately, clinically, and who were then scuttled by the system. The system didn't allow them to provide the treatment in the timely manner that they would have liked to have done. Now, I'm getting stories from our surgeons and anaesthetists all around the country, where they're sitting around waiting for hours to do important procedure, emergency procedures like brain surgery, and they're waiting for hours for an emergency theatre to become available. Now, that's not because the doctors are not there, ready to do their job, it's because they haven't got the resources to be able to do it. And that's where we need to really focus our efforts on providing appropriate resources in our public hospitals. In this particular issue, we are seeing, also, the difference in choice between the people who are privately insured and those who are not. And it's not acceptable that people who are not insured, who are disadvantaged, and who are needy of public hospitals services should have to wait extended periods of time for treatment. Thank you all.

Ends