New face(s) – same challenges
Dr Michael Page
AMA (WA) President
Whilst over time the relationship between the Australian Medical Association (WA) and the State Government might be anything from frosty to warm, from combative to relaxed; the underlying mutual aim should always be for it to be professional, courteous and constructive. Neither party expects to agree on everything, but we should always be able to understand the other’s point of view.
It is with this principle in mind that we move forward into a new era of State AMA-Government relations, with a new Health Minister chairing a newly created Cabinet sub-committee on health, comprising five ministers with different health-intersecting portfolios.
With our CEO Dr Bennie Ng, I recently met with the new Health Minister, The Hon Meredith Hammat MLA and several of her advisers. We found her team to be curious, receptive and engaged. We highlighted the key burning issues for the doctors and patients of WA – in particular, public hospital capacity and infrastructure, private hospital viability, and the training pipeline for doctors in general practice and the hospital specialties.
Some people have questioned the handing of a portfolio as big and important as health from an experienced ministerial office to a brand new one. But there are potential upsides in fresh thinking and new opportunities to collaborate. It presents a good opportunity to re-prosecute our agenda which, after all, ought to align with the agenda of any Health Minister. We also shouldn’t forget that the Health Department overseen by the Minister has a capable Director General in place in Dr Shirley Bowen.
During the State election campaign, we called for 1,981 beds to be added to the system. This number was not plucked out of the air (and its similarity to my birth year is coincidental) – it was based on catching WA up to national averages of beds per head of population.
“Some people have questioned the handing of a portfolio as big and important as health from an experienced ministerial office to a brand new one, but there are potential upsides in fresh thinking and new opportunities to collaborate.
There was some self-consciousness in calling for this number of beds, and an anticipation of being laughed out of town. It’s a big number, but we are a big State with a big problem that’s only going to get bigger as the population grows and ages.
New ways of doing things, like ambulance diversion, same-day joint replacements, and home-based monitoring and treatment will all help, but the need for inpatient care is not going away anytime soon.
Building and running hospitals is expensive. But with reports of Metronet to date costing around $14 billion, an amount that would buy at least five new tertiary hospitals, we should get some perspective.
Yes, public transport is important, as are other types of public infrastructure. But through the unchecked sprawling geographical growth of our low-density city, we only make things harder and more expensive for ourselves with respect to transportation, education, health and other services.
Perhaps if we want a world-class health system in the future rather than a continual decline in universal access to care, we should start there.