The Australian Medical Association President Dr Pesce supports Physiotherapy Services within community Medical Centres
Push for merger of GP practices
MICHELLE GRATTAN
April 27, 2010
A BIG health package in next month’s budget is expected to encourage GP practices to
merge, either actually or ”virtually”, allowing patients better one-stop access to related
services. The fresh funds are likely to run into hundreds of millions of dollars over four
years.
This would be on top of the more than $5.4 billion over four years that the government
promised last week to encourage premiers to sign up to its hospitals reform measures.
That package left primary healthcare mostly to be dealt with later. Primary healthcare is
solely the responsibility of the Commonwealth so the funds did not have to be
announced to the states. The package would also allow the government to have health
at the heart of the budget, continuing a theme it wants to reinforce in the run-up to the
election.
Australian Medical Association president Andrew Pesce said the AMA wanted the
government to help GPs make the transition from small-scale practices to adopting
economies of scale and improving access for patients to related health services. Where
feasible, the allied services – such as practice nurses, physiotherapists, dietitians,
podiatrists and diabetes educators – should be located in the same place as the GPs, he
said. Help could include assistance for capital investment, such as extra rooms, or for
electronic linkages between separate practices. The AMA would prefer encouragement
for existing practices to consolidate rather than the creation of what Dr Pesce described
as ”huge hospital-like superclinics”.
The government previously promised 36 superclinics: two are operating, eight are
offering interim services and 15 are being built. The ”kitchen cabinet” of Kevin Rudd,
Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner will review the budget preparations today.
Mr Swan returns from the US this morning after attending the meetings of the G20
finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund. The government’s National
Health and Hospitals Reform Commission urged the establishment of ”comprehensive
primary healthcare centres and services”, describing this as a ”one-stop-shop” approach
that gave patients access to an expanded range of services, better co-ordinated referrals
and expanded opening hours. The report said: ”Comprehensive primary healthcare is
likely to include both ‘physical’ centres and ‘virtual’ services. ”Existing primary
healthcare service providers could combine and evolve into these larger groups, while
the Commonwealth government might also target the development of new
comprehensive primary healthcare centres and services in areas where there is now
limited access to these services.”
Adapted from The Age, Online (http://www.theage.com.au/national/push-for-merger-of-
gp-practices-20100426-tncl.html)
