This appeared last week:
Health system ‘at crisis tipping point’
1 August, 2024
Australia’s health system is at a tipping point, with patients unable to afford basic care, hospitals critically overloaded, and a tide of chronic disease threatening to overwhelm all parts of the system.
The Australian Medical Association’s new 10-year vision for the future of the nation’s health paints a grim picture if the country is not able to structurally reform primary healthcare and the hospital system, with life expectancy threatening to head into reverse. The manifesto calls for urgent progress on further reforming Medicare and shifting funding towards preventive care.
The doctors’ group has described the state of healthcare in Australia as being locked in a “system-wide struggle”, with millions of Australians unable to access or afford to see a GP, growing logjams in public hospitals and a private system in need of reform.
The federal government is examining the viability of private hospitals and bureaucrats have for the past month been pouring over the books of operators. A recent meeting of private hospital bosses and private insurers was told the majority of private hospitals were operating at wafer-thin margins of less than 1.5 per cent and were in danger of bankruptcy.
The crisis in private hospitals is threatening to have severe knock-on effects for a public system already on its knees and beset by a system-wide staffing crisis, most acutely in psychiatry.
The AMA’s new vision for Australia’s health lays out a blueprint to transform the health system into one that values prevention as much as treatment, and views healthcare as an investment to be made, as opposed to a cost to be managed.
“While governments recognise the pervasive impact of poor health, healthcare is still viewed as a cost rather than a strategic investment,” said AMA president Steve Robson. “This creates a system that responds to poor health outcomes rather than preventing them. We need to change this thinking.”
Professor Robson will launch the new vision for Australia’s health at the AMA’s national conference at the Gold Coast on Friday. Danielle McMullen, a GP, former AMA (NSW) president and for the past two years vice-president of the federal AMA, was recently elected the next AMA president and will take over from Professor Robson in October.
She has said this is a pivotal time in health in which the system faced unprecedented pressures and has named the proper funding of general practice, reducing surgery waiting lists in public hospitals, ensuring private health insurance provides value and addressing the workforce crisis as pressing issues to be confronted.
As part of the AMA’s healthcare vision, members of the organisation named factors that were impeding timely and equitable access to care as the biggest issues of concern. These included long waiting lists for appointments, workforce shortages, public hospitals that are over capacity, the increasing costs of healthcare, and inadequate supply of services in many areas of Australia.
Widespread burnout among doctors following the pandemic was also highlighted. This was exacerbated by heavy administrative burdens, poor professional development, the impact of inadequate Medicare rebates and increasing cost of delivering care on practice viability, and the challenges navigating the labyrinth of regulatory and compliance requirements.
Professor Robson, under whose presidency the AMA advocated for significant increases in commonwealth investment in general practice and extra funding public hospitals, said the past two years had seen the beginning of important breakdowns in the silos in the health system and deeper collaboration across governments but enormous pressures remain.
Australia currently spends $9,365 per person and over 10 per cent of GDP on health. The country has a high number of years spent in ill-health compared to other OECD countries and is lagging in the prevention of chronic disease.
“Now is the time for innovative policies and measures to address the issues facing our healthcare system and ensure all Australians … have access to good healthcare.”
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We have all heard these sort of calls a zillion times in the past and we always seem to have muddled through. The hard thing to discern just how severe the problems actually are and how they have changed in the last few years.
I have to say I don’t get the sense of looming catastrophe at present but I fear I may be out of touch with those as the coal face.
It would be good to hear from some who ae working down to pit as to how good or bad things overall are at present!
Let us all know how it is actually going!
David.
This is the same old catastrophic calamatisation we have been epeatedly pummelled with decade after decade.
ReplyDeleteWe keep hearing this old stuff when the old generation moves aside and a new lot of political aspirants come to the fore eager to make their name and their present known
Nothing much changes except the actors.