AMA President Dr Danielle McMullen provides an update from the national AMA.
Hello, and happy Friday! It's nice to be home again for a brief while after an incredible week in Thailand for the Medical Associations of South East Asian Nations mid-term meeting. It was really lovely to meet up with colleagues from the region, and I managed to meet a bit of a superstar while in Chonburi… Moo Deng, the pygmy hippo !
Our rockstar VP Julian Rait handled things deftly in my absence, including some cracking media on our push for a tax on sugary drinks and a brilliant headline in The Australian: 'AMA diagnoses a bulk-bill bust'. We'll continue to push the government to look beyond its bulk billing package and implement some meaningful reform of Medicare items to better support longer consults for patients, recognising that the average consultation length is now nearly 19 minutes (and the rebate the same as a 10 minute visit)!
We've also been concerned this week by draft changes to the AGPT Grant Opportunity guidelines for 2026-2030, which seek to prioritise registrar placements in bulk-billing practices participating in the BBPIP. While we support efforts to strengthen access to care, we've raised concerns with the department that training quality and community need - not billing models - should remain the guiding principles for placement decisions, and we have asked for consultation with the AMA and other stakeholders regarding the changes.
Now that I am back home it means I am also in back to back-to-back meetings (that's a lot of back). Thursday started with the vital work of the National Doctors Health and Wellbeing Leadership Alliance, ensuring that we make the most of an additional year of funding to implement the Every Doctor, Every Setting action plan. This vital document is a set of implementable actions that training bodies, employers and other organisations in the health sector can take to make sure doctors have safe places to work. Many organisations are already taking steps. If yours hasn't, take a look at the action plan .
We met with Chief Psychiatrist Dr Sophie Davidson on Thursday afternoon to discuss the expansion of GPs in the diagnosis and treatment of people with ADHD. There continues to be a lot of political and media interest in this issue, and there is much to be worked through before implementation. We're broadly supportive of the expanded role for GPs, and we will work with government to ensure this works for patients and for doctors, and that models support high quality care.
Today I'm at a Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA) event in Brisbane to discuss issues that matter to doctors such as cybersecurity, the emergence of AI scribes and other AI in practices, and the user experience of electronic patient records. It's so important that we as doctors have a role in shaping these technologies so they work for us and our patients, and so that novelty does not outweigh usefulness. It's also important we are aware of what's coming and I am really looking forward to hearing from stakeholders from across the medical software spectrum.
Next week is - of course - our AMA25 conference in Adelaide and I can't wait to see you there! Registrations close today so if you are keen to attend and haven't pulled the trigger on registration yet… the time is now!
See you in Adelaide!
