National Health Reform Agreement
All quotes can be attributed to the AMA Tasmania President, Dr Michael Lumsden-Steel
The AMA Tasmania welcomes today's announcement of additional national health funding for Tasmania. This is a positive step; however, it does not change the reality on the ground.
While the funding announcement will help reset current base funding levels, it fails to address the decades of underinvestment in health infrastructure, technology, healthcare innovation and reform, competitive recruitment, retention, or training of our healthcare workforce.
We urgently need investment in hospital capacity, medical staffing, diagnostics, patient flow, and critical infrastructure.
The unresolved backlog of unread X-rays shows the risks of delaying essential clinical spending.
The workforce crisis shows the cost of under-investing in safe staffing.
The morale crisis shows a system that failed to back its staff.
The current system is overwhelmed because demand has significantly outpaced investment.
It is a failure of long-term system design, inadequate resources, and repeated cost-cutting measures, particularly when major projects are implemented that only deliver two-thirds of what is necessary to meet demand. This cycle must end.
No additional funding will magically resolve these issues overnight.
However, we can implement interim measures to secure the workforce and necessary resources until we can recruit and train the needed staff, acquire the healthcare technology and IT, and develop the infrastructure required for the future.
Achieving this will require ongoing investment over the next five to ten years to build the infrastructure and rebuild the public hospital workforce we need.
We must focus on the Clinical Service Plan for delivering healthcare in Tasmania, which must include prevention and public health and structural budget decisions that align funding with the actual level of community need, and we must reset current policies and decision-making processes that lead to delays, lack input from clinicians, impact patient care, and affect workforce morale.
While we welcome this new funding and look forward to receiving more details of the agreement reached today, it must mark the beginning, not the end, of a genuine plan to rebuild a healthcare system that is safe, modern, and fit for purpose.
The AMA Tasmania will continue to advocate for a single-funder model to eliminate buck-passing and ensure accountability for outcomes. This is the dialogue we want to see initiated between the Tasmanian and Federal health ministers as we prepare for the next round of National Health Reform Agreements.
Tasmanians deserve nothing less.>>ENDS
