Page 4052 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 24 November 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR BERRY: A great point. If you get into dispute with them, you can whiz them off to the Industrial Relations Commission and you can have a dispute settling process that will sort the matter out. That is the difference. In 1987 the visiting medical officers or part-time specialists held the ACT community to ransom with an eight-month strike that saw public patients refused non-critical treatment at our hospitals. I had reported to me on the phone this morning an example of a woman who was being confined. She called her obstetrician, who said, "I will come and treat you if you sign a piece of paper that you are a private patient; otherwise I will not come". Shame, shame, shame! She then called upon another doctor, who was ashamed of the behaviour of his colleague and attended and did the job for nothing.
Some went interstate in 1987; others took out mortgages; and some waited in pain. The greedy doctors running the system seem prepared to let this recur. In fact, as Dr John O'Donnell, the executive director of clinical services, stated on ABC radio this morning, at times he has to bargain with the doctors controlling the dispute to obtain treatment for a patient in urgent need. People are put in gaol for that sort of assault. This is in direct contrast to the extremely hardworking salaried medical officers, placed in the unenviable position of begging a VMO to provide treatment and finding these requests refused. Of course, these salaried medical officers are subject to awards and a dispute settling opportunity in the Industrial Relations Commission.
In August, the Auditor-General found that there was a lack of information on previous negotiations with the AMA. I am talking about Mr Humphries's reign there; he did nothing. Mr Humphries, as I suggested earlier, folded on the issue of the provision of ophthalmology in the Territory; he gave in, with the gun at the head.
Mr Humphries: At least they were working in my system.
MR BERRY: You would pay them anything because they are your mates. There were payments of up to $1.3m for fee for service VMOs. That probably explains Mrs Carnell's turnaround from her earlier statements that their wages were untenable. She probably discovered how friendly they were to the Liberal Party. The Auditor-General found that VMOs in Canberra are amongst the highest paid in Australia; the ACT Government could save $1m if payments were more consistent with national rates; annual payments would be $900,000 less if a single rate of on-call allowance were paid; an estimated 1,000 public patient admissions may involve some element of irregularity or fraud in the payments made to doctors; the procedure for the admission and treatment of obstetric cases is resulting in increased costs; and there were allegations of booking fees being charged.
Those are the issues, and others, we are going to address. Reports by the Auditor-General are not to be taken lightly, and I have moved to implement the recommendations, which include procedures to reduce the risk that payments are made for services not provided and basing the ACT public system schedule on the medical benefits schedule, as mentioned by the Auditor. There are significant savings to the ACT on that score. The doctors reject that. They want it altered in order that they can make more money out of it. They do not want that schedule. (Extension of time granted)
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .