Page 695 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
continue to lobby the commonwealth around this matter. It is not acceptable that we are 60 general practitioners short. But when you look at the situation at a national level and at the number of doctors per capita, the ACT always comes out showing that we have more doctors per capita than anywhere else.
That is because we have a huge number of GPs that work in research and the public service and who do not actually provide a GP benefit to the community in the sense of seeing patients. So when you ask on a needs basis for consideration around our workforce shortage, some of that data can be distorted at times because of the fact that we do have a lot of doctors here, but they are not necessarily working as doctors.
I think we do have a genuine understanding from the commonwealth that the GP shortage is putting pressure on our own services in the emergency department particularly. Through the COAG arrangement, we have got $10 million extra to deal with pressure in our emergency departments. We intend to use that money to assist us with the start-up of our nurse practitioner clinic to be operated at the Canberra Hospital where we would like to start this new model of care. But that does not mean that I have taken the eye off the ball in terms of looking at ways to attract GPs to the ACT.
We announced a whole range of initiatives in the budget. I am working with the Division of General Practice and the AMA. In fact, there is a working group that looks through attraction and retention programs for GPs to come to the ACT. We are working with the ANU Medical School to make sure that we get GP registrar positions. We are working with clinics to make sure that they can take on students. We have been successful in getting a couple of extra places that are funded for GP trainees to work within clinics in the ACT. We fund a GP adviser within the Department of Health. We also have GP liaison units that work in our hospitals. We fund the Canberra after-hours locum medical service to provide an after-hours general practice in Canberra at both our public hospitals.
We are going to extend that to nursing homes, which is an area of significant pressure that GPs are telling us about, and to the emergency department for elderly patients who are in nursing homes who do not have a GP. We think an in-hours locum medical service for elderly residents of nursing homes will support current general practice with their workloads and hopefully assist the emergency department in ensuring that people do not get to the point where they need to come to the emergency department.
We are doing what we can with students. We are doing what we can with the industry. We are working with the commonwealth. We are going to fund some of our own programs in the budget around GP attraction and retention. So I would challenge Mr Hanson’s allegations that we are not doing enough in this area. But we have never agreed with the Liberal Party about GP clinics in the suburbs that bulk-bill. Firstly, they could not deliver them. They cannot provide the numbers to ensure that they bulk-bill, although I think what they were going to do was actually budget fund them. There was also industry concern. I think probably one of the stronger statements from the AMA in the election campaign relating to health policies was their concern about the idea of bulk-billing GP clinics in the suburbs.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .