Taking it back to Mr. Rudd.

Members of the Need More GPs group met with the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s representative on October 31, at his Griffith electorate office.

We pointed out that the ideas (in respect of the critical GP shortage) that we put to Mr Rudd at a meeting in May (and to Nicola Roxon in September) still have not been satisfactorily addressed despite a welter of correspondence from Canberra public servants.  Mr Samuel Walker, of the Prime Minister’s Griffith electorate office, said he could understand our concern, and undertook to refer the issue back to the relevant Departmental officers.

In summary, our suggestions to relieve the GP shortage in the short to medium-term are:

1.To assist the urban crisis: a short moratorium (say, 6-12 months) on the provider number restriction, with some other conditions: only Australian residents or citizens who are fully registered and have a demonstrable urban commitment. This could allow an uptake of IMGs into urban practices at risk of closing, without causing an exodus from the bush

2.A reduction of the time-limit on IMGs obtaining unrestricted provider numbers from 10 to three years. Three years seems a reasonable amount of time to demonstrate a commitment to the country. It is also short enough to make up skilling not too much of an issue for IMGs who have not found work in Australia for whatever reason. We also suggest that as a three-year requirement is less intimidating than a 10-year one this may increase the number of doctors prepared to consider going to the bush.

3. A ‘Welcome Back’ package; an up skilling and mentoring program to assist doctors return to work and temporary assistance to GPs who wish to work part-time while their children are under-school age, in the form of a subsidy of their medical indemnity cost, to be repaid (as is the student HECS bill) when their working hours increase substantially.

4. Increase rural Medicare rebates by 20-30%.  At present there is no difference income-wise between rural and urban doctors.

For a fuller discussion, please go to "The Solutions Discussion" link at the top of the sidebar. 

Not The Impossible Dream.

It seems that not everyone in the world thinks it is an impossible dream to have affordable excellent care for everyone. The Institute for Health Care Improvement based in the USA has been in pursuit of radical health reform for some time now, and in June will hold a seminar on Achieving the Triple Aim: The Simultaneous Pursuit of Excellent Heath, Ideal Care, and Controlled Costs.

Is anyone from Australia with the Triple Abilities of Power, Influence, and Positive Attitude going to go to this?

June 23-24, 2008
Washington, DC

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is now offering Achieving the Triple Aim: The Simultaneous Pursuit of Excellent Health, Ideal Care, and Controlled Costs, a seminar in which we’ll share with a wider audience the work conducted through our innovative Triple Aim initiative. The “Triple Aim” refers to the pursuit of optimal performance across three areas: the health of the population; the health experience of individuals; and the per capita cost for a population. Organizations working on the Triple Aim may focus, for example, on:

• Planning and customizing care at the level of the individual, targeted to the best feasible outcomes
• Cooperating and coordinating with other specialties, hospitals, and community services related to health
• Customizing services efficiently, based on appropriate segmentation of the population using a health risk assessment tool or equivalent

You can read more about it by going to the IHI main page (linked above) or to the exact page HERE.