AMA President Dr Danielle McMullen provides members with the latest from the national AMA.
Hello, and happy Friday!
It's been a week in which I barely caught a breath, with meetings, flights to catch, media interviews to do and somewhere amongst it all, getting to see my patients.
We of course marked Remembrance Day on 11 November, and highlighted the challenging role doctors provide during times of combat and military operations. Thank you to all of you who have served and those of you who are part of an ADF family.
We asked for your feedback this week to help update our position statement on the role of doctors. Our role has never been more critical to define, nor more urgent to defend. We want to hear from you so please, give us your feedback!
Patient safety risks being eroded by scope of practice creep blurring the lines of clinical responsibilities. Workforce shortages are being used as an excuse to justify quick political fixes that prioritise the expediency of access over the importance of patient safety.
I met with the health minister Mark Butler at Parliament House this week and discussed this, as well as a range of other issues which need urgent solutions, including hospital funding and aged care. I also reiterated that some of his commentary around the recent bulk billing changes was unhelpful and that GPs are really the cornerstone of healthcare in this country, are highly accessible, and are critical to ensuring patients get high quality care.
Appropriate use of title is still high on our agenda. We've had some recent success with podiatrists, and this week we met with the Minister's office about our concerns with the use of "oral surgeon". We joined forces with colleagues from the Australian and New Zealand Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons to explain the confusion out there for patients and health services trying to understand the skills and qualifications of the practitioner they are seeing. We want similar protections to prohibit dentists from using the title oral surgeon.
During the week we also saw the renewed media focus on so-called "skyrocketing" fees for non-GP specialists. We know that egregious billing is rare. The drivers of costs for patients are poor medicare rebates, and poor access to public options. We will continue pushing for meaningful reforms that actually make a difference for patients.
Aged care and bed block was also in the news this week, and so it was timely that we released our revised Position Statement on Health and Care of Older People . With an ageing population it is so critical that we get right the infrastructure and health care system to provide care to the ageing. Recent changes in GP funding for aged care haven't worked, and its time that all governments and care providers took a closer look at how we deliver the care this population actually needs. Public hospitals are breaking under the pressure of people awaiting complex healthcare in a residential facility - we need to get this fixed.
I met with the Expert Panel on Primary Care and Workforce Reviews in Canberra this week where some of the solutions to boosting primary care capacity are being discussed - its slow going, but we are making progress on designing funding and system reforms to ensure general practices have the flexibility to deliver the care their population needs.
Some of this will require better digital systems, and on Tuesday I attended a Demonstrator of Connected Care which walked us through what's on the horizon for better digital health systems. It was really exciting to see how close some of this real-world improvement is. E-referrals, systems that talk to each other across GP, ambulance and hospital, live shared chronic care plans…this is all getting so much closer and will enable
The AMA Mental Health Committee (MHC) met to discuss its ongoing work on innovative reform to mental health access and services in Australia. For patients and families seeking mental healthcare navigating the mental health system and finding the right care at the right time can be extremely challenging. The AMA has a unique committee bringing together GPs, psychiatrists and other specialists to ensure that mechanisms proposed for reform will work for our whole profession.
This weekend I will be back in Brisbane but not at home - it's time to get my CPD up to date at the RACGP conference!making my way back from Canberra to my home base in Brisbane via the Royal Australian College of GPs' annual conference, GP25.
This reminds me, don't miss being a part of the AMA26 National Conference on 28-29 August in Melbourne. If you're an AMA member with research, insights or innovations to share, now is the time to submit your abstract… And don't be surprised if you hear about some extremely discounted extra-early-bird tickets in the VERY near future.
I'll be back next Friday with more from your national AMA, and don't forget to keep an eye out for those early-bird AMA26 tickets!
