Interview AMA President, Dr Bill Glasson, with Jo Mazocchi, ABC Radio 'Breakfast' Wagga - State of the health system
MAZOCCHI: Now to a story that affects us all, and that's the state of our health system. Just yesterday, I saw details in Wagga's Daily Advertiser newspaper that the Greater Murray Area Health Service is now facing an unexpected $8 million budget blow-out. It's hard to believe, isn't it? $8 million in the red. Something has to give, doesn't it?
There are claims that, as a result, there will be a tightening of staff recruitment but the Greater Murray Area Health Service says, while it admits it's facing a difficult situation, the provision of services will be maintained.
There's no doubt the situation will make it difficult, though, to provide new services, and joining me on the line is the President of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Bill Glasson. Good morning to you, Dr Glasson.
GLASSON: Good morning, Jo, how are you?
MAZOCCHI: I'm very well, I'm very well. It's good to talk to you again. It's been a while.
GLASSON: It has, it has. It's nice to sort of be talking to you out into the bush too, which is the important thing.
MAZOCCHI: Absolutely. Now, I understand you're coming to Wagga, tomorrow?
GLASSON: Yes, we are. We're coming out there tomorrow afternoon which we're looking forward to, having a visit to the doctors, the hospitals and hopefully speak to members of the community about issues surrounding health care in their region. And, I suppose, what they'd like to see happen to try and turn things around. It's very important that we listen to our doctors and listen to our constituents out in those areas to ensure that, you know, when we go back to governments, we're actually singing the right tune, so to speak.
MAZOCCHI: Well, the Greater Murray's budget blow out, I assume it must be going to be part of your talks.
GLASSON: Absolutely. Obviously the public hospital system with a budget of all these districts that are having difficulties need to be talked about. Because the reality is, they're not blowing their budget out, Jo, they just haven't been given enough funds in the first place to meet the demands of the community.
And I know we've got to live within our means, so to speak, but the reality is that the public hospitals across this country and the funding of the various districts around this country is insufficient to meet the needs of the community. And we're hearing an example after example of this.
And one of the election strategies, you know we want - what we want to drive with both parties at the next election federally - is what they are going to do about the public hospital funding because the current 5 per cent per year is not enough to meet the requirements of our hospital system in this country. And we've got to get increased funding, increased resources and increased manpower is the other thing. We're short of doctors and nurses, as you know, particularly in our rural areas. And we've said to both governments, 'for goodness sake, start talking constructively about workforce.'
MAZOCCHI: Yes, absolutely. I'll come to that point in a moment. But Bill Glasson, do you think that in your opinion, you know, will health services be affected with or without this injection of funds that presumably the Greater Murray Area Health Service is going to need?
GLASSON: Well, it will, it has to. I mean, basically what happens is you have to then make cuts. You've got to decide who gets care as opposed to somebody else. You've got to ration services. And as a clinician, that's often very difficult because you're trying to provide services to everybody on equal basis. And it becomes very unfair and people get frustrated in the system, Jo, that's the doctors and nurses providing the service. They're saying that, you know, that they're expected to do more and more with less and less. And as waiting lists blow out, obviously we see patients begin to suffer. And we get frustrated with the whole thing.
MAZOCCHI: Every day there seems to be yet another crisis in our health system. Do you think, I know it's a week or so ago, it was muted that perhaps the Federal Government should be in charge of health. Do you think that would make a difference?
GLASSON: Jo, I think there needs to be a re-look at how we actually fund the whole system. Now. I think some sort of single model, whether it be a co-operative sort of federal model or the feds taking it over altogether, really it needs - is part of the discussion that needs to be had. Because currently the system of duplication at the moment is costing us about a billion dollars extra per year, billion dollars that could go into our public hospitals.
So I think that, you know, it's a debate that will be held during this election and, no doubt, I notice that Tony Abbott put it on the agenda the other day at a conference and there's been a lot of discussion about that issue since then.
MAZOCCHI: I know even at a very basic level, Bill Glasson, as you know I've been living in Sydney for a long time and recently I tried to see a doctor just for a check up here in Wagga and I was told it would take me 10 weeks because it wasn't an emergency. It would take me 10 weeks to see a doctor here because all the doctors had closed their books.
GLASSON: That's exactly right, Jo, we're hearing this across the whole country. There's many areas where you cannot get a doctor at all. And I had an example of a patient who'd sold up in Launceston the other day because they moved down there and found they just couldn't get into a doctor, full-stop. But just, as you say looking at often a month, two months to be actually seen on a routine basis.
This reflects the workforce shortage we have and it reflects the system that's really undermined I suppose, particularly general practice, in the last decade. And we've got to re-look at the whole system by which we have funded patients of general practitioners and try and restore, I suppose, the esteem in general practice and try and attract the younger doctors back into doing general practice. Because we can't get enough doctors into the system to actually train as general practitioners.
And so again, I had discussions with the people who do the training about trying to ensure that we put a system in place that there's flexibility, particularly that allows our females to train in a flexible way if they're bringing up children and attract them into these rural areas.
MAZOCCHI: I mean just on that topic of rural doctors, what is the latest on the rural doctors' shortage?
GLASSON: Well, it's really getting worse and worse. I think that there's been a lot of stop-gap measures as far as trying to import more and more overseas trained doctors. And a lot of those doctors are very good but often they're put out into areas where they have little support and I don't think that's the long-term solution17And I think that obviously the long-term solution is to train our own. We need more, young medical students coming through and obviously we need to make the general practice stream, as I said, far more attractive for the young doctors to go into full-stop.
MAZOCCHI: Well it looks like you'll have a lot to talk about tomorrow.
GLASSON: There will be, Jo. I'm looking forward to it. As I say, I love going bush and that's where I was sort of born and bred myself.
MAZOCCHI: Hmm.
GLASSON: And really here, as I said, what the doctors' concerns are, are just to make sure that what I'm saying reflects their views as well. Because often you go off sort of making a comment about an issue and find that your colleagues in a particular area say, listen, that's not what we think. So it's important that the federal organisation, particularly myself, get out there and talk to the doctors and make sure what I'm saying reflects their views.
MAZOCCHI: We might try and catch up with you again on Friday.
GLASSON: Jo, that would be great. Look forward to that.
MAZOCCHI: Yes, great talking to you again, Bill.
GLASSON: Thanks, Jo.
MAZOCCHI: Okay, 'bye, 'bye. Dr Bill Glasson, the President of the Australian Medical Association.
Ends