Happy Friday!
There was a distinctly digital feel to much of this week, and that was certainly true at our Medical Practice Committee meeting. The agenda was dominated by digital-related matters, with input on several issues, including a mechanism to access and share radiology images, and the design of government’s promised national medicines list. While patient consent and privacy are undoubtedly critical concepts, alongside security and safety, so too is clinical workflow design. The last thing we need as doctors is yet another disconnected portal to check!
We also had our own digital hustings on Tuesday evening, with candidates for our upcoming presidential and vice-presidential elections taking part in a webinar for members. It’s with very mixed feelings that I’ll hand over the reins in a few months’ time, but it was great to hear what each candidate has in mind. I’m sure the AMA will be in very good hands.
The election will be held at our national conference in August, and there are only a few tickets left so make sure you don’t miss out on AMA26 and get yours today !
Earlier on Tuesday, I met with Minister for Health, Disability and Ageing Mark Butler to express deep concern about the exclusion of medical students from expanded prac payments. These payments would help improve equity of access to medical programs for students from a range of backgrounds, and help build the future workforce needed, particularly in rural and regional Australia. Evidence shows that one of the best ways to get more doctors working in the bush is to recruit rural students to a career in medicine and support them to complete as much of their training as possible regionally — prac payments would support this.
The Minister acknowledged our concerns and we will be writing to the Prime Minister and other relevant ministers to reinforce these and highlight why the program must include medical students, and that this must happen soon.
Workforce was also top of the agenda when I met with Health Workforce QLD. While we continue to push for a national health workforce agency, it remains vitally important in the interim that existing agencies around the country work together. By coming together to generate, curate, and articulate meaningful data about our medical workforce across sectors, we can better identify and highlight gaps, and advocate for effective solutions.
Along with the Chair of the AMA Council of Doctors in Training, Dr Sanjay Hettige, I met with General Practice Registrars Australia and while there have been some great wins for GP registrars in recent years, particularly securing salary incentives, paid parental leave and study leave, there are remaining challenges to ensuring our next generation of GPs are as well-supported as possible. The AMA and its Council of Doctors in Training has done a great deal to highlight the need to better support GP registrars and we are committed to working with organisations like GPRA to ensure the GP registrar voice is heard in policy making forums.
Our Vice President Associate Professor Julian Rait spent an afternoon leading the charge on updates to the medical cost finder website. This important piece of legislation should improve patients’ visibility of out-of-pocket costs. Enhancing transparency around fees is a key pillar of our advocacy work as it is a far more beneficial step for patients than shortsighted and ill-conceived ideas like fee regulation.
One last digital update for you. I’ll be taking part, later today, in recording the first of a new batch of episodes of our ‘The Waiting Room’ podcast. After a brief hiatus, this much-loved piece of AMA content will be working its way back to a streaming service near you very soon. I'm sure we’ll all be looking forward to hearing what Omar, Chris, and their guests have in store for us over the coming episodes.
Have a great weekend.
