Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President, with Steve Price, Radio 2UE
PRICE: One of the most remarkable aspects of this whole Dr Michael Wooldridge issue of $5 million spent on behalf of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners is his explanation, where he says that the money was surplused from funds within his portfolio, approved by former Finance Minister, John Fahey.
The minister says it came from areas where the department would otherwise be required to return the monies - the unspent monies to the Department of Finance. Sure we could think of plenty of ways that money could have been spent. Dr Kerryn Phelps, President of the AMA, has not always seen eye to eye with Dr Wooldridge. She joins me. Thanks for your time.
PHELPS: Hello, Steve.
PRICE: That explanation about the money having to be returned if it wasn't spent. Do you wear that?
PHELPS: No, I don't. As you said, I mean there are hundreds of different ways you could have spent that money and got some patient benefit out of their own. We've got public hospitals that are screaming for funding. We've got medical researchers who desperately need funds to continue their important work. We've got people in rural areas who are crying out for specialist services. And to think that money that was supposed to be going to specialist outreach services has been diverted to this sort of cause, I don't think the public finds particularly acceptable.
PRICE: You and I have talked about problems with doctors and health services in the bush before. They've even said and admitted that $4 million of it was from a program to boost specialist resources in the bush.
PHELPS: That's right. And I think people in rural areas quite rightly would be asking a few questions about whether they were getting any value of that $4 million that was diverted away from getting specialists out to the country.
PRICE: What does The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners do?
PHELPS: What they are supposed to do is to take care of the training of new general practitioners. To look after the continuing medical education of existing specialists in general practice and to establish and maintain standards for general practice care, all of which are very noble and necessary objectives and we support that wholeheartedly.
What they have been aspiring to do is to become a new lobby group for general practice in Canberra. And I think that there are serious questions over whether those two roles are indeed compatible. One of the other problems is that former Health Minister, Michael Wooldridge, actually took the training of general practitioners out of the hands of the college last year and put it into a government controlled body called the General Practice Training and Education Limited. So you know there's been certainly a re-defining of the college's role by this minister over the last year.
PRICE: If you're going to be a lobby group in Canberra like that, it would be handy to have the former Health Minister as one of your consultants, wouldn't it?
PHELPS: It would be very handy to have a former Health Minister as a Consultant. But I think it would also be something of an impediment, as well. Because I think a new Health Minister, when they come in to the portfolio, I think they want to put their own stamp on the portfolio. I don't think that they necessarily, I mean you'd have to ask the new Health Minister this, but I don't know that they would necessarily be wanting to be dealing with their predecessor on specific issues.
PRICE: She doesn't seem that concerned. Should asthma sufferers feel cheated?
PHELPS: I think that asthma sufferers should feel as if their needs have been placed secondary. One of the reasons that the money for the asthma management program was underspent was the bureaucratic hoops that GPs had to jump through in order to access the funds. And it meant that it was the practices that were perhaps bigger and better resourced and had practice managers who could do all the paper work and the administration required, were the ones who were accessing the funds.
And if the program had been made simpler, as we suggested, in the beginning, then the take up rate would have been higher.
PRICE: I appreciate your time. Thanks. Dr Kerryn Phelps, President of the AMA. Let's hope that that money has not gone, not spent and that it can be saved. But it just seems ridiculous when everyone around the country is crying out for more funds for health that you could throw $5 million towards this organisation and then use as an excuse that it was money that would have gone back to Treasury. Is that how we run Government in this country now? If you're an asthma sufferer out there I'm sure you'd feel real comfortable about that happening.
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