Patients pushed aside in latest Federal Government health reform statement

CRANAplus con­sid­ers his state­ment fails to reflect the open‐​minded nature of the cur­rent health‐​care debate.

The organ­i­sa­tion also believes nurs­es, mid­wives, allied health pro­fes­sion­als and Indige­nous Health Work­ers are not being treat­ed fair­ly com­pared to GPs.

“We are shocked that he has stat­ed that ​‘Our pri­ma­ry health­care approach recog­nis­es the fun­da­men­tal impor­tance of GPs as being the cen­tre of pri­ma­ry care’, said Pres­i­dent Christo­pher Cliffe.

“Pri­ma­ry Health Care is about the con­sumer. The con­sumer MUST be the cen­ter of pri­ma­ry care, not the GP. But the con­sumer seems to be the ones who are get­ting lost in the lat­est ​‘tweak­ing’ of our health reform.” He con­tin­ued: ​“There is no doubt that GP’s play an essen­tial role, but here in remote Aus­tralia where a major­i­ty of all health care is deliv­ered by Remote Area nurs­es and Abo­rig­i­nal Health work­ers, the tra­di­tion­al GP led Pri­ma­ry Care mod­el just doesn’t fit.

CEO Car­ole Tay­lor said the organ­i­sa­tion was tired of the med­ical pro­fes­sion being seen as the only group that con­tributes to health care in this country.

“This results in arro­gant dis­re­gard for the tire­less efforts of Mid­wives, Indige­nous Health Work­ers, Allied Health Pro­fes­sion­als and Nurs­es who work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with their clients, as the ​‘Cen­ter’ of effec­tive pri­ma­ry health­care,” she said.

Ms Tay­lor point­ed out that, while more and more addi­tion­al resources were going into med­i­cine and med­ical stu­dents, with gen­er­ous incen­tives offered, the evi­dence shows that Aus­tralia doesn’t have a short­age of doc­tors – mere­ly a mal‐​distribution as peo­ple don’t want to leave the big cities.

Ms Tay­lor expressed her dis­ap­point­ment that oth­er mem­bers of the health pro­fes­sions did not get equi­table access to sim­i­lar incentives.

“It would be of more val­ue if the vest­ed inter­est groups in health spent more time look­ing at how reforms can pro­vide bet­ter health out­comes rather than pro­tect­ing their own turf,” she said. ​“Maybe then our sys­tem could be con­sumer focused and the resul­tant health out­comes improved.”

Con­tact:

Car­ole Tay­lor CEO 0429 649 226
Christo­pher Cliffe Pres­i­dent 0488 513 042