Australian Medical Association

On 3 March 2010, the Commonwealth Government announced its National Health and Hospitals Network policy – the first phase of its health reform package. The first phase focuses on arrangements for the funding and governance for public hospitals and primary care.

The Prime Minister also foreshadowed in his speech further initiatives in the future concerning:

• the inadequacy of hospital bed numbers, including specific problems in emergency departments, elective surgery and sub-acute care;
• the expansion of primary care;
• the undersupply of doctors, nurses and other health professionals;
• the inadequacy of electronic health records across the system; and
• preventative health care, aged care, mental health and dental health services.

AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, today urged Australians to discuss organ and tissue donation with their families over the Christmas break.

“The Christmas holidays can be a wonderful time for family members to enjoy each other’s company. It can also be an opportunity for families to discuss important issues such as organ and tissue donation,” Dr Pesce said.

“Organ donation can save a life and improve the quality of life for many more people. It’s an issue that every family should discuss.

In November 2008 the Council of Australian Governments' agreed to introduce a nationally-consistent approach to activity-based funding for public hospital services to allow comparisons of efficiency across public hospitals.

Subsequently, the Australian Government asked the Productivity Commission to examine and report on the relative performance of the public and private hospital systems. In June 2009, the Productivity Commission released a paper seeking information and feedback on a range of issues including treatment costs, including out-of-pocket patient expenses and rates of fully-informed financial consent, rates of hospital-acquired infections and other relevant performance indicators.

Below are the two submissions the AMA made to the Productivity Commission on the Performance of public and private hospital systems. The AMA submissions also address the Commission's term of reference on informed financial consent.

MJA Media Release -  Call for mandatory reporting of golden staph bloodstream infections

Mandatory reporting of Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (bloodstream infections) should be introduced to help improved health care practices and save lives, according to an editorial published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

MJA Media Release -  Banish technical jargon from patient consent forms

Technical jargon and acronyms should be banished from elective surgery patient consent forms, according to the authors of a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Dr Mark Siddins, Director of the Urology Unit at the Repatriation General Hospital in Adelaide, and his co-authors conducted retrospective reviews of consent forms for all patients on the unit’s waiting list on three occasions in 2005, 2007 and 2008.

Of 1280 consent documents, only 18.5 per cent described procedures using plain language. The remaining forms could not readily be understood without specialist medical knowledge.

Doctors in hospital emergency departments are under increasing pressure from administrators to allow nursing teams to take responsibility for patients without being seen by a doctor.

AMA President, Dr Rosanna Capolingua, said the practice had come under scrutiny in NSW where it had been linked to the deaths of two patients.

AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2008

An AMA analysis of Australia's public hospital system.

AMA Submission to the Maternity Services Review - 2008

AMA Work-life flexibility survey report

Submission to Senate Community Affairs Committee regarding Patient Assisted Travel Schemes May 2007