GP Task Force Discussion Paper

The GP Task Force has released the Discussion Paper (2.4Mb PDF) on the issues and challenges for General Practice and Primary Health Care.

If you would like a hard copy of the paper contact the Task Force Secretariat:
Email: gptaskforce@act.gov.au
Phone: 6205 0796



The Task Force is holding public forums at the following times and locations. These sessiona re open to all members of the community:

Civic
29 June 2009 at 2:30pm - 4:30pm
Room 8, Level 2, Griffin Centre
Genge Street, Canberra City, ACT

Tuggeranong
30 June 2009 at 6:00pm 8:00pm
Room 1, Tuggeranong Community Centre
245 Cowlishaw Street, Greenway, ACT

Belconnen
2 July 2009 at 6:00pm 8:00pm
Community Room, Belconnen Library
12 Chandler Street, Belconnen, ACT

Consumer Experiences and Expectations of General Practice in the ACT: A Snapshot 2009

The Health Care Consumers' Association (HCCA) is the peak consumer voice on health care in the ACT. Currently our organisation is supporting a consumer member of the ACT Government’s GP Task Force.

We want to know about your experiences and expectations of general practice in the ACT.

We have developed an on line survey so that we can get a better understanding of the consumer experiences and expectations of general practice in the ACT. We will use the results to advocate for consumers in the ACT. We will make the results of this survey publicly available and also share the results with the GP Task Force.

It will take about 10 minutes to complete the survey. Your responses are anonymous.

The GP Task Force was set up in April 2009 by the ACT Minister for Health, Katy Gallagher after several suburban general practices suddenly closed their doors. The ACT is suffering form a persistent shortage of general practitioners; we would need to recruit 60 full time GPs to satisfy demand. It is clear that we are not going to find 60 GPs overnight. The GP Task Force is investigating options and innovations for improving access to primary health care (ie, non hospital health care) in the ACT and will report back to the ACT Legislative Assembly in September.

If you wish to provide any documents which relate to the questions in this survey or which you consider may be of interest to HCCA, please send by either email (GPSnapshot@gmail.com), fax (02 6290 1662) or by mail to:

GP Snapshot
Health Care Consumers' Association
PO Box 717
MAWSON ACT 2607

Take the survey now

Quality Health Care Conversation

The Quality Health Care Conversation is a consultation on the proposed National Safety and Quality Framework.

The Canberra Consultation will be held on Friday 26 June (11am – 3pm ) at Olims Hotel, Braddon. HCCA is organising this workshop for the Canberra Community on behalf of the Commission and we strongly encourage you to attend. This is an excellent opportunity to provide feedback direct to the Commission.

The framework is designed to guide action to improve the safety and quality of the care provided in all health care settings over the next decade.

The proposed Framework was developed in consultation with consumers, clinicians, and health service managers. The Quality Health Care Conversation aims to engage with a wider audience and seek their feedback on the directions established in the proposed National Safety and Quality Framework. The Commission will use this feedback to prioritise the strategies listed in the discussion paper and to make recommendations for future action to improve the safety and quality of health care in Australia.

The Commission is very keen to hear your views on the proposed framework and the possible strategies listed in the Discussion Paper on achieving the directions established in the proposed National and Safety Quality Framework.

GP Task Force Consultation

HCCA are conducting an online survey get a snapshot of GP usage in the ACT and a snapshot of how health consumers would like things to be. The survey is almost finalised and includes questions that the Task Force is asking all GP clinics in the ACT.

The GP Task Force was set up in April 2009 after several suburban general practices suddenly closed their doors. The ACT is suffering form a persistent shortage of general practitioners; we would need to recruit 60 full time GPs to satisfy demand. It is clear that we are not going to find 60 GPs overnight. The health minister wants the GP Task Force to investigate GP workforce issues in Canberra.

The GP Task Force has been charged with the responsibility of investigating options and innovations for improving access to primary health care (non hospital health care) in the ACT. The Task Force will report back to the ACT Legislative Assembly in September.

The Health Care Consumers' Association is supporting a consumer member of the ACT Government’s GP Task Force. This has been Janne Graham. In Janne’s absence Ann Wentworth has taken on this role.

The results will form a strong component of our response to the GP Task Force discussion paper, soon to be released.

Air Quality Index

We have a number of members who have respiratory conditions that are seriously affected by air quality. Air quality is an important issue for all of us as we can’t avoid breathing in the air around us. Diane Proctor has been looking into how consumers can access information about air quality and has written this post.

For those of us who suffer from respiratory diseases, we often do not understand why we feel so much worse on some days than others. Asthma sufferers, people with COPD, and related illnesses sometimes feel really breathless for no apparent reason. Having two brothers mad about flying and in the air force, I have long been interested in weather forecasting. (I too tried to get my private pilot's license back in my late teens but was thwarted by the cost!) As a result of this, I go to the Bureau of Meteorology's website regularly. In wandering around the site, I discovered that I could get air quality readings (or measurements of pollution in the atmosphere) from the Sydney area and also from most regions in NSW. This aroused my curiosity and I was even more interested when I sensed all was not well with the ACT air quality in Canberra a week or so ago. It was the day of the dust storms! I rang up the Bureau and was eventually connected to a very helpful person in Melbourne who explained to me that BOM does not have the instruments to measure pollution but if State Health Authorities give them the information they will publish it. He advised me to look at my local emergency services website Sure enough, there were pollution warnings published there. By chance, I happened to hear a health alert warning on the ABC regional station (666 here in Canberra) and I talked to the producer of the program. She told me that as part of its mandate, the ABC must broadcast such alerts However, no other broadcasters are obliged to do so.

So what does this mean for us? If you have a respiratory disease, I suggest you check the Emergency Service website regularly, especially if you feel unwell for no apparent reason. I also suggest that support groups for people with respiratory diseases try to encourage their Health Departments to convey such warnings to the BOM as a matter of course so that they are included in the regular weather reports. If we know we should stay indoors and close the windows, we could probably save a lot of visits to the ER rooms at Hospitals and thus save a lot of money. Also, we can watch a good movie and not worry!!!

Budget for 2009 - 2010

Overall, HCCA is pleased to see that the Government has made provisions for services to meet the growing demand, despite the financial crisis. The budget makes provision for further development of the services as set out in Your Health - Our Priority, especially the e-health infrastructure and the design and construction of the community health centre at Belconnen. while we recognise that there is funding to build GP workforce, and funding the in-hours locum service, we are disappointed that there are not more initiatives aimed at improving access to primary health care for older people and will work with the GP Task Force to find ways to overcome this seemingly intractable problem.

We welcome the expenditure for electronic health capacity and infrastructure and consider that it is essential to building a robust and efficient health service for our community.

Enhanced Community Health Centre for Belconnen
HCCA welcomes the Government’s provision of $51.3m for the design and construction of the ECHC at Belconnen. We are very pleased that this has been brought forward, and consider that this offers great potential to develop services for those people in the Belconnen region. We look forward seeing the ACT Government working with the community to identify the services that will best meet the needs of that community. We are also very interested to see how the ECHC will work with the services that will be offered with the West Belconnen Health Cooperative so that they complement each other rather than duplicate services. We also look forward to seeing sufficient flexibility built into the design of the facility to enable other services to be located here over time, such as the ACT Health Equipment Service.

Walk in Centre - The Canberra Hospital
We look forward to working with the Government in the development of the walk in centre for The Canberra Hospital.

Cancer Services
We note the increase in funding for cancer services ($4.2m over four years). Comprehensive cancer services however, need to be provided far sooner than as stated in the documents, to effectively deal with the burden of disease.

Calvary
There is no specific provision for growth in public hospital services on the Bruce campus, while we acknowledge there is uncertainty of who will operate this, we would like to see provision for the development of services to complement those provided across the Territory.

Work Force
There is recognition that people are experiencing difficulty accessing GPs; the budget includes $1.9m to establish an in-hours aged care locum service. we consider that this funding allocation is insufficient in view of the demand we see in residential aged care facilities, older people living independently in the community, people with disabilities and other people with mobility issues.

We are pleased to see the funding of 15 new health assistants. We support the notion of the development of more innovative clinical roles, but we note with some concern there is no specific funding to further increase the role of nurse practitioners. Nurse practitioners have demonstrated their worth as an effective adjunct to traditional roles and we would like to see more funding to increase the number of nurse practitioners in the health workforce.

We welcome the intiatives to build our GP workforce, including the four training positions in general practice for junior doctors and the medical graduate scholarships.

Support for Consumers with Chronic Conditions
We welcome the allocation of $4.2m over 4 years to ensure better support for people with chronic conditions; we call on the government for further support of these programs once they have proven to be effective. We would expect to see considerable increase in funding to enable the roll out to more people in the community.

Consumers, General Practice and General PRactitioners

The GP Task Force is interested in identifying consumer needs and expectations about general practice and general practitioners. Janne Graham is member of the GP Task Force and has written this post based on her considerable experience as a consumer representative and work completed by the Consumers Health Forum.

The organized health consumer movement has consulted widely with consumers on their experiences and perceptions of general practice, and their engagement with practitioners.

Generally research on consumer satisfaction highlights differences between the criteria applied by doctors and by consumers to a consultation in general practice.

What people want from their general practices includes:

Structural Issues

• Bulk billing/ affordable access
• Physical access, both locality and building design
• Out-of hours access
• Gender choice
• Good appointment systems – emergency and routine.

Consumers use different medical services for different needs. For conditions perceived to require extended care consumers prefer “traditional” general practices.

Process Issues

• Holistic approach, including knowledge of and referral to other health and community resources
• Improved preventive approach.

Outcome Issues
Providing explanations, diagnosis, outlining expectations of interventions and treatment
GPs as managers/team leaders seen as valuable when done well but not always necessary
Gatekeeper role acknowledged relating to access to health services but problematic (particularly for people with disabilities) when relating to other social resources (e.g. pensions)

“Some consumers place greater emphasis on accessibility of the practice, some on the attributes and qualities of the practitioners and some on the quality of care available. These differences might vary for different consumers, or groups of consumers, including those with special needs.” Review of Standards of General Practice p2

References

Consumer Perspectives on General Practice Restructuring, Consumers Health Forum of Australia, undated (1991?)

Building Links with Consumers: The Key to Quality General Practice, Consumers Health Forum of Australia, 1993.

Consumers Expectations of General Practice in Australia, Consumers Health Forum of Australia April 1999

Putting Consumers in the Picture – Consumer Perspectives on Better Integration of General Practice and Other Primary Health Care and Related Services, Consumers Health Forum of Australia, June 1999

Review of Standards of General Practice, Consumers Health Forum of Australia, March 2004

Wade T Engaging Consumers with General Practice in Primary Care Development in The Australian Health Consumer, No 2 2003-4, pp27-8