Our Healthcare Future
AMA Tasmania welcomes today's Government announcements including into the critical and overdue investment in ICT. All parts of Tasmania's health care system must be based on the reality that all aspects of the health system are linked, and depend on each other to meet patient and community demand effectively, this can only be achieved by investment in IT infrastructure and a clear ICT strategy.
We look forward to working with the government on how best to support General Practice to provide appropriate urgent care in the community. GPs have a profound influence on both health outcomes and health expenditure. To ensure that general practice is equipped to meet the challenges of providing urgent care to an ageing population and the growing burden of complex and chronic disease, the government needs to deliver real resources to assist frontline GP services.
AMA Tasmania remains fully committed to the responsibility of providing the right care at the right time in the right place for all patients. We see the pilot of the outreach of specialist services as answering this call. We hope this initiative is successful and can be implemented throughout the state as an effective means to help alleviate bed block across all hospitals, particularly the Royal Hobart Hospital and the Launceston General Hospital which puts increased pressure on the Emergency Departments.
We look forward to participating in the health workforce project consultation process to work through any issues that arise from that. What is important is the government must provide sustainable health funding to underpin existing services as well as those that may come from this plan.
We anticipate more details on the governments health care Infrastructure plans but in the meantime make the call that the government needs to seriously investigate a single hospital for the North West in light of COVID and the problems they have faced this year with old infrastructure, and insufficient staff to keep all services going.
AMA Tasmania members stand ready to engage with the government on the Our Healthcare Future initiative to ensure the best possible outcomes are explored and implemented. >>>ENDS