Page 2962 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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relief that I felt was that my daughter and I had someone who actually had some case notes and there would be some continuity of care.
It does seem absurd—and I am someone who grew up in a world where the doctor actually came to your house when you were sick and was more of a family friend than anything else—that our health care, generally speaking, has moved down many, many rungs on the ladder. I think that each time we make a change it seems as though our horizon is a little lower and I think it is a great pity if we cannot look back to what is the ideal health system which services the needs of clients and hopefully prevents people having to go to emergency because emergency should be a place of last resort.
It is a real pity that it has become, for many people, the place of first resort. Of course, these days one goes to the doctor with an issue and is sent on to emergency anyway. So that is, I think, another complicating factor. What, of course, happens is that it can take so long to get to see a GP, if you are so lucky that you can, that the conditions worsen and then people present to emergency rather than having that condition treated before it becomes an emergency.
Also, some people go to emergency first because they simply cannot pay the upfront fees for the doctors. And this is probably at the heart of our problem. We should reduce the number of people who present at emergency simply because they do not have a doctor, they cannot afford a doctor, it is the weekend so bulk-billing doctors are not available.
Perhaps there is a lack of understanding of how CALMS works. I noticed when I went to emergency, unfortunately just a week or two ago, that, while the CALMS clinic is quite close to emergency, I certainly did not know whether I should go to CALMS or whether I should go to emergency. So I went to emergency. But how clear is it to people where they should go when they have a need for medical care?
I know that Katy Gallagher has asked the federal government for more money so that we are in the category where we can induce more GPs into our territory. Unfortunately, we are competing with places that might seem more attractive to GPs coming to the country from overseas. And I am concerned about our creaming off good doctors from countries which probably need them a lot more than we do. That is the reality of recruitment of overseas doctors.
But also I am aware that, according to a program that I heard on the radio recently, overseas doctors are actually not applying to come to Australia as their first preference, by a long shot. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is the incredible examination and scrutiny of overseas doctors under Australian government regulations; and secondly, of course, I do not think we can dismiss the effect of the Haneef case.
I have actually got quite a lot more to say, but I am very pleased that now there is something left for me to say tomorrow when we debate Mr Stefaniak’s motion, because I was a little afraid that I would have said everything I had to say about health before we came to that. Of course, I hate to be silent in a debate. So I would be very happy to go on with the rest of the relevant material that I have tomorrow when debating Mr Stefaniak’s motion.
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