Report fails rural health crisis
"The review of the impact of the Trade Practices Act (TPA) on recruitment and retention of rural doctors fails to provide practical solutions for doctors and communities facing doctor shortages," the President of the AMA, Dr Kerryn Phelps said today.
"The Wilkinson Report fails to address the key issues associated with rural medical rosters and leaves doctors involved with rosters or contemplating rural rosters in a high degree of uncertainty.
"More publications, more committees and more doctors' time and money spent trying to comply with the TPA is not the answer.
"Wilkinson acknowledges that the TPA causes problems for rural doctors but fails to provide substantive or practical solutions.
"For example the Report recognises that there is an imbalance of market power between rural hospitals and individual doctors, but implies that the best solution is for each doctor to take legal action against the hospital for unconscionable conduct under the TPA.
"This is hardly practical in a country town, compared to joint negotiations between local doctors and the hospital, currently prevented by the TPA.
"The AMA supports recommendations for the establishment of a health services advisory panel, for better communication and consultation between doctors and the ACCC and for a simplified, lower cost authorisation process.
"However the report ignores the reality of the rural doctor crisis.
"Rural Australia lacks about 2,000 doctors and as the Australian Bureau of Statistics has recently shown, most rural doctors are working 50-60 hrs a week.
"To suggest that they must now undertake courses in Trade Practices Law and try to prove public benefit to receive authorisation from the ACCC to establish cooperative arrangements is totally unnecessary.
"If they want to discuss how much they will charge each other's patients, allocate specific work, for example obstetrics, to individual doctors, or jointly negotiate with the local hospital, they will need the ACCC's permission on a case by case basis.
"Doctors will also need the ACCC's permission if they decide jointly to disband their roster, or to exclude a doctor they deem unsuitable for the roster.
"If they breach the TPA, even inadvertently, they can face fines of up to $5 million, large legal costs, as well as public humiliation.
"This is hardly an incentive to go into rural practice.
"The alternative proposed by the AMA is a simple notification process where doctors notify any arrangements that might have TPA implications and are then only subject to investigation if the ACCC can show the arrangement is not in the public interest.
"The AMA notes that a number of the Wilkinson recommendations, particularly in relation to authorisation, will need to be considered by Government after the Dawson Review of the competition provision of the Trade Practices Act reports early next year.
"The AMA will strongly argue that the authorisation process should be modified for the AMA's simple notification system to avoid the current protracted costly and uncertain process of authorisation."
CONTACT: John Flannery (02) 6270 5477 / (0419) 494 761
Judith Tokley (02) 6270 5471 / (0408) 824 306