Interview - AMA President, Dr Bill Glasson, with Liam Bartlett , ABC 720 Perth 'Morning' - GP Clinics

BARTLETT:      The Australian Medical Association is saying setting up these clinics is a furphy. We're joined this morning by Doctor Bill Glasson, who is the National President of the AMA, talking to us from Brisbane. Good morning, doctor.

 GLASSON:      Good morning Liam.  How are you, mate?

BARTLETT:      Good, thank you. What's wrong with them?

GLASSON:       Well, essentially, I think that our issue was that there was some feeling that these GP clinics - they are not really general practice clinics, anyway, they're primary care clinics attached to Accident and Emergency Departments - you, know, would somehow decrease or ease the burden on the bed block situation that we find in our public hospitals.

When you talk to the doctors who actually run the A&E Departments, they tell you that, okay, there are a number of category five patients, or these primary care patients, that do come into the system.

But they're not the problem. The problem is that it's people on wheelchairs, people who are on beds. Patients, actually, first of all can't get into the Accident and Emergency Department because we can't get the patients that are in there up into the ward.  And, as well, the patients in the ward we can't ... we don't have enough aged care facility beds to get them out of the hospital.

So, if there's some idea that this is going to help the issue around our A&E Departments as far as the bed block or exit block that we talk about, I think that is a furphy.

Now, if you're going to set up a GP clinic or primary care clinic and you want to see these category fives of sore throats, sore ears and whatever, then I think the ideal model of it is to keep it in the general practice model.

In other words, see your GP, who actually looks after the whole patient rather than providing this sort of 'episodic medicine'. And I don't think it's going to necessarily achieve what Mr McGinty hopes it will.

There's a terrible shortage of doctors out there in the system, particularly General Practitioners. I know that in a lot of areas that GPs are trying to provide an after hours service.

And I would like to think that Mr McGinty consults those doctors to make sure that he doesn't undermine the services that are already being provided. And really, I suppose, be fairly honest with the public of what they're trying to achieve here.

BARTLETT:      Well we've got cooperation between the State Health Minister and the Federal Health Minister, Labor and Liberal. You'd have to take that as a positive, wouldn't you?

GLASSON:       That is a positive and I congratulate the two on getting together, to try and address the issue. And I think that, you know, obviously Mr McGinty thinks this is going to make the A&E Departments work better.

But I think in reality those category five patients are using the quick ones that you can see. I don't think you actually need to set up a special system to see them.

And, as I said, I think that the reality here is that the A&E Departments will continue to have problems while we do not have enough beds. And now Mr McGinty says that we've got more beds in Western Australia, which is good. But we not only need more beds in our public hospitals, but we need more beds in our aged care facilities as well.

So, it's really a review of the whole system and the better the Commonwealth and the State, in this situation, getting together and deciding what's in the best interest of the system and of patient care, the more likely we're going to get a positive outcome.

BARTLETT:      Doctor, are the GPs worried about this in terms of taking business away potentially from their surgeries because if people know that they can get free service here, definitely it'd be bulk billed. Wouldn't they be tempted to go to these clinics, anyway?

GLASSON:       Liam, the truth is our GPs are drowning. Drowning in the workload. And I'm sure that the GPs out there have got no concerns about having some of the work taken away from them.

I suppose what they're saying to me is that these patients should be seen in a general practice model. In other words this is not, these are not GP clinics they're talking about. You might call them primary care clinics or 'episodic medicine' medical clinics. But they're not actually treating the whole patient.

And I think that's really a backward step, because one patient comes in with a, whatever it be, a sore ear, whatever. You'd then, not only do you attend to the sore ear but you're trying to attend to the whole patient and, at the end of the day, that ends up being a cost saving exercise...

BARTLETT:      That might be all right during the day, but what about the after hours component.  Isn't that a problem for a lot of people?

GLASSON:       Well, it is a problem, I agree. And I think that in many areas doctors are trying to provide that service. Now when that service doesn't exist, the best thing is to sit down with the doctors who reside and work in those areas, and say, listen we've got a problem, what can we do to establish a proper after hours clinic, where these patients can be seen in, I suppose, the proper model. And come up with a solution that is focused on the doctors who live and provide those services on a day-to-day basis.

The concern with these clinics they're talking about here is that they'll be probably staffed with a lot of overseas trained doctors, because I think that's the only way they're going to find the doctors to staff them.

Those doctors often find themselves a little bit out in the cold in the sense of not being ... not fitting into our system necessarily that easily from the outset. And they find themselves, yes, a little bit like 'cannon fodder'.

And so I think that we've got to make sure these overseas trained doctors are treated appropriately.  That they are put in a model where they can progress up the ladder, so to speak. And, as I said, I think that we've got to look at this issue more broadly than they are at the moment.

BARTLETT:      Doctor, thanks for your time this morning.

GLASSON:       Thanks very much indeed, and good morning.

BARTLETT:      Doctor Bill Glasson, the National President of the AMA.

Ends