Super clinics top wish list for health care changes
Australians want sweeping changes to health services, including super clinics where patients can see a wide range of professionals in one location.
The call for changes, which go further than those proposed by the Federal Government, come from hundreds of consumers and health professionals who took part in 26 forums held around Australia by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission.
According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, the reports broadly back the Federal Government’s policies that seek to end blame-shifting while improving effectiveness and accountability, but the forums, part of the most extensive community consultations on health seen in Australia, heard calls for an even bigger revamp and a dilution of doctors’ dominant role in health care.
The commission will present an interim report to the Government. The concept of super clinics, which the Government is planning to establish in needy communities, has come under fire from the Australian Medical Association, but health workers raised the idea “repeatedly” during the forums.
The clinics would allow easier movement of patients between different health-care providers – doctors and allied professionals, such as physiotherapists and psychologists – and more communication between services.
It was “felt by many to provide a good model for health care”, particularly in providing preventive measures, in chronic and complex health-care delivery, and in relieving pressure on emergency departments. The role of general practitioners as “gatekeepers” in information and care decisions was “inefficient, expensive and confusing”, forum participants said.
“Instead, GPs should have a role of the gate opener, and this role should not be solely the domain of GPs,” the report states.
The reports of forums conducted by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission with community members and frontline health workers in thirteen venues around the country are now available at http://www.nhhrc.org.au/the
