President’s update: CAS, cybercrooks, AI and the Roadshow hits the Sunshine State

What a fantastic week!

We kicked it off hosting our national Colleges, Associations and Societies (CAS) meeting where we gathered 100 of Australia’s medical leaders, from more than 30 medical groups to tackle the big issues of the day.

Colleges, associations and societies do an incredible job of ensuring we have a safe, supported medical workforce, and that we train the doctors we need for the future. It’s a mission we share at the AMA as we navigate health system design, as well as individual member support.

We all know our healthcare system is under strain, whether it's the logjam in our public hospitals, the workforce shortages right across the country, particularly in rural and remote Australia, and the closures that we're seeing in private hospital services. We have an ageing population, with more chronic illness, and an increasingly complicated health system with new treatments and tools available every day. We all need to come together and urgently address these issues. These are affecting Australians every day, and therefore they're affecting doctors. We're a profession trained to care, and the issues that hurt our patients hurt us too.

We have an excellent healthcare system here in Australia, but the cracks are beginning to show. We need repair and restoration — connecting the pieces, not creating new separate parts.

We must have a health workforce plan for the future, a rural health strategy, a clear commitment to the primary care 10-year plan and the strengthening Medicare taskforce report. We need strong investment in our public hospitals, and we need a sustainable private health sector.

We covered a lot of this at the CAS meeting, along with the importance of the system supporting doctors’ mental health and our work on the Every Doctor Every Setting (EDES) implementation. We also discussed the urgent reforms needed to our regulatory system (i.e. Ahpra). Regulators must keep patient safety as their key driver. But protecting the welfare of a practitioner under investigation must also be built into their very ethos.

The AMA held an engaging and well-attended cybersecurity webinar on Tuesday which was pretty eye-opening. Cyber threats are one of the big issues doctors keep raising and it was great to be able to touch on some of these issues. I should say that between cyber issues and artificial intelligence (AI), I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels like some extra upskilling in these areas would come in handy at work…

If this is you too, then come along to AMA25 in Adelaide on August 1-3 where we have a session on AI in practice, and another on cyber security. Both will have some practical tips and some trending insights — so whether you’re a cutting-edge entrepreneur, or feel like a computer dinosaur, I hope there will be something in it for you. Plenty more on the program too, which will continue to be updated over the next couple of days.

Our President’s Roadshow continues this week with Queensland hosting us this time around. It’s been great to catch up with our members and our healthcare colleagues. I’ve decided to focus this time on “deep end” general practice and the crisis facing our private hospital. I know all of us in general practice see some really complex patients. But there are some practices where that is their bread and butter.

Paul Moran, Clinical Services Director, Pam Barker, CEO of BYS

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Brisbane Youth Service (BYS) and QuIHN — two practices really going above and beyond to care for communities in need. We talked about the changes to funding models which could really help these services provide wraparound care. I also visited Mater Mothers to gain a deeper understanding of the pressure on our maternity services, and today I’ll visit CRT Imaging (owned by AMA members!), ICON cancer centre and Pacific private day hospital to hear about the pressures in the private hospital space.

Of course, a highlight was member dinners in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. It's always wonderful to hear from passionate members about what we’re doing well, and where they’d like us to put more attention. I’m always amazed by the breadth of interests in our membership — it's what makes the AMA so special.

Tomorrow is our AMA Council of Doctors in Training meeting, which I am very looking forward to, and I will update you on that next week!