This week marks the start of my term as AMA President and, together with new Vice President Associate Professor Julian Rait, we can't wait to get started on advocating for our members.
I'm excited to be taking on the role of your new AMA President, with your new Vice President Associate Professor Julian Rait.
We can't wait to start working with our members on the many critical issues facing our profession and advocating for a better health system for you and your patients.
Investment in general practice - the cornerstone of Australia's health system - will be one of our key priorities. We know that boosting investment in general practice is essential, with GPs looking after Australians from birth to death and through all the ups and downs in between. And we know that improved access and affordability in primary care will have flow on effects to the rest of our system.
Access to general practice contributes to keeping people out of our hospitals. Our public hospitals are continuing to struggle with performance against emergency department and elective surgery measures dropping year-on-year. Our campaigning and advocacy for more investment and improvements to the national hospital funding agreement will continue. We want to see our patients, who are often waiting years in pain, get seen sooner.
We welcomed the additional investment in hospital funding announced last year for the new National Health Reform Agreement that followed our logjam campaign, but we need immediate additional funding to tackle the huge waiting lists across the country and help get patients the treatment they desperately need.
The issues facing the private health sector are also front of mind. We will continue our advocacy in private health, with plenty of challenges facing the sector.
We have been calling for reform of the private health sector - a vital pillar of the health system - for some time now. Our members and our patients need a sustainable private health system that delivers value for patients, protects patient choice, and maintains clinical independence for practitioners.
Many of the policy settings for the private health sector were established a very long time ago and it's been a case of set and forget. We need to rethink those policies, and we need an independent single authority that can oversee the entire sector.
Investment in preventive health is a must if we are going to tackle increasing rates of chronic disease across the country. Prevention is key to an effective health system, with the burden of chronic disease in an ageing population impacting the healthcare sector across the board.
Healthcare is still viewed as a cost rather than a strategic investment. This creates a system that responds to poor health outcomes rather than preventing them. We are pushing to change this thinking.
The AMA is the voice of the medical profession and the only group representing all doctors across the country of all specialties and stages of career. There is a lot to do. But we are ready to take on the challenge and we have plan, with our recently launched Vision for Australia' s Health providing a blueprint for governments to tackle the issues in our healthcare system. I look forward to seeing governments continue to work with the AMA to deliver on that plan.
Finally, we welcome your feedback. Please write to me [email protected] if there's anything you need to raise.
Hear from Dr McMullen and A/Prof Rait in our video introducing the new team
