Cunning plan to fix hospitals

Brendan Smith has a rather good media release out on this here.

An old friend of mine that worked for a GP would say that coming up to holidays (such as christmas) they would be fully booked, but then as the holidays came closer they would start recieving many cancellations.

It seems that people would book appointments months in advance just in case they are sick, when it came close to the day, if they were ok, they would then cancel the appointments.

Sounds nuts doesnt it?

I think the most important part of the CT article was the last sentence:

“But Mr Corbell conceded that in Canberra, people were often visiting emergency departments with GP-type complaints simply because they could not get an appointment to see a general practitioner.”

Two problems really:
1. There aren’t enough GPs to go around in Canberra, meaning that you have to book about a week in advance if you want to see one (fine if you have a long term condition, but God help you if you fall sick overnight).

2. Almost none of them bulk bill.

Not sure who to blame for those two problems – feds or locals?

I kind of got the idea that the way this is supposed to run is by discouraging people to come to hospitals thus there is less people there and not so busy.

Nice try, but it doesn’t really solve the root of the problem which appears to be political ineptness and managerial apathy.

Ah, but then again, didn’t I see the Commrade on TV the other day extolling the virtues of a new machine that goes ‘ping’….