Interview - Dr Bill Glasson, AMA President, with Steve Price, Radio 2UE - COAG, medial and health issues

COMPERE:     Appalling stories this week of peoples' lives being put at risk in the New South Wales hospital system.  It's really crumbling under the weight of winter. Can it get any worse?  Well let's hope not. 

The Prime Minister, as I said, is in Canberra meeting with the State Premiers today.  The Premiers want the health issue being put right at the top of the agenda, the PM's not quite so happy to do that.  Dr Bill Glasson's the national president of the AMA.  He's been good enough to hang on and join us.  Thanks for your time, doctor.

GLASSON:     Steve, morning.  How are you, mate?

COMPERE:     I'm very well.  It should be at the top of the agenda, it should be agenda item number one, it should be if necessary, the only thing they talk about for the next week.

GLASSON:      Yes, it should be one, two and three, mate.  If we don't get this one sorted out, as you know there'll be longer and longer queues of people to be seen in our A&E departments.  It's not good enough.  When those sort of patients are hanging around waiting to be seen, with chest pain and strokes and so on, what's happened to our health system?

COMPERE:     I've sat around this week and watched Professor Dwyer, I mean try and talk his way through what is a situation that's just intolerable for these hospitals.  I mean, have you ever known it to be as bad as this?

GLASSON:      No.  It really has reached a stage where... wherever I go round Australia, it's the same old story, and the reality is that we've got more and more bed closures, and more and more demands on the system. I think the real issue is that we have an ageing population, and the bureaucrats have to realise that they just can't close hospital beds and close departments and think we can provide the same sort of service to a community that has ever increasing demands.

COMPERE:     We all like simplistic solutions.  There's not one to this problem, I know.  If you were asked what is the bigger problem, the decline in bulk billing or the numbers of elderly people taking up hospital beds, what would you say?

GLASSON:      Look, the public hospital bed situation is by far the priority. That's where we've got to direct a lot of our health dollars, to make sure those people who need the care, particularly at the emergency centres, actually get it. That's where our responsibility should lie, to make sure that the people in there who have acute emergencies, who require cancer care, can get the resources that they need.

COMPERE:      Do too many people go to emergency rather than to their GP?

GLASSON:      Look, I think that's a fallacy.  I think the reality is that 99% of the patients that go to A&E departments round this country, are truly accident emergency patients and require to be assessed at that level.  I don't believe they're being flogged, as we're led to believe, by general practice type patients.  If you talk to all the A&E directors in the departments round this country, they say about 5% maybe Steve, if you're lucky, could be classed as general practice-type patients.

COMPERE:     Saw a surgeon last night on the TV news, I think he said that his liability insurance used to be 500, it's now 50,000.

GLASSON:      Well it is.  I mean I went to a meeting in Sydney last week, and I heard one story after another of people paying, well up to 100,000 or more, this is for general surgeons and orthopaedic surgeons.  And a lot of young female surgeons and physicians who find that in trying to run a practice and bring up a family, they can't continue to pay these ever increasing indemnity premiums.  And now with the IB&R levy is the straw that's broken the camel's back. They're saying that they just cannot continue, they're getting out of the system. 

And so I suppose at my meeting with the Prime Minister on Monday, I really want to try and highlight the issue of the workforce in this country, Steve.  We're not going to have enough money in the hospitals to fund patients, we're not going to have any doctors.  And the nurses are surely in crisis as well.  We've got a medical workforce crisis in this country that we've never seen before, and it's going to get worse unless people recognise it and address it straight away.

COMPERE:     Is it fair that this Federal Government hold this bayonet, as Bob Carr put it yesterday, to the heads of the states, to get them to sign this new agreement?

GLASSON:      I would be saying if I was the Prime Minister, and I think we do need more money in the system, there's no two ways about it, that it should be dollar for dollar. If the Commonwealth is putting in $43 billion over five years, the states need to put in $43 billion over five years, and it is- -

COMPERE:      What are the states offering?

GLASSON:      Well, at the moment they're saying they're putting an equivalent amount.  Now that's arguable, I'm not quite sure what the true figure is Steve, but they must be honest with the fact that they have at least 50% responsibility for this problem, and not try and shift the blame.  It's equal blame, and essentially we've got to get rid of the blame out of this, and fix the damn problem.

COMPERE:     Have you got any doubt this is the biggest issue facing the country?

GLASSON:      I think it's by far the biggest issue.  I sit in the middle of it day to day, and I hear what is happening at the coalface, and health in this country is the biggest single issue we're facing. Full stop.

COMPERE:      And you get a hearing from the PM Monday?

GLASSON:      Yes, we're speaking to the PM on Monday, and essentially I want to really try and highlight the importance of the whole issue of our workforce to him, the whole issue of the funding of the system, and unless we can get some sort of concrete proposal in place, and as I keep saying, once they sign off on this agreement, then let's get our political coats off Steve, and let's talk about the problem, let's talk about what the real needs are out there.

COMPERE:     Shouldn't we be having a health summit?  I mean we've just had an alcohol summit here in New South Wales which has descended into high fuss, but don't we need a national health summit?

GLASSON:      Yes, we already had one two weeks ago, that John Dwyer ran down in Canberra, which was supposedly that.  And there was a lot of very good information presented at that, and some very good resolutions came out of it.  We've got to make sure we sit down and look at those resolutions and decide how to move forward.  But it's got to be bi-partisan.  Both sides of politics have to agree, and you have to get experts in there to actually advise us on the way to go forward.

COMPERE:     Good luck.  I'd like to talk to you after you've seen the Prime Minister.

GLASSON:      Thanks mate.  OK.

Ends