Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Hansard source

The Frankston Medicentre has been operating successfully in the Dunkley community since 1986. It has the confidence of all the stakeholders, widespread participation from local GPs, and the understanding and valued support of patients. It provides a crucial collaborative asset to the accident and emergency department at the Frankston Hospital, where it is collocated. The Howard government, recognising this very important after-hours GP service, provided $97,000 of funding for a year, on top of earlier avenues of support, to ensure that this service continued to operate. The collaboration with Frankston Hospital is crucial, though, because the medicentre sees about 12,000 patients per year—category 4 and 5 patients that would otherwise join the queues of the accident and emergency department of Frankston Hospital, queues that can be long. I think it does a remarkable job with far too few resources allocated to it by the state Labor government.

So here we have collaboration between local GPs and the hospital, organised and coordinated by some dedicated professionals, including Jacquie Haigh. Jacquie is a wonderful individual. Jacquie’s role takes on many aspects in terms of keeping the program going. Jacquie Haigh and Dr Andrew Smith from the Medicentre Advisory Committee came to see me the other day, alarmed that the Rudd Labor government is going to halve the subsidy made available to this after-hours service—halve the modest funding of around $100,000 a year, to provide this crucial service that accommodates 12,000 patients that would otherwise be added to the waiting list in the accident and emergency department. What they have been told is that the termination of the Howard government after-hours funding program has been replaced in the recent budget by the General Practice After Hours Program, a grant program, where only a maximum of $100,000 is available over two years on a competitive basis. There is no certainty about whether the funding will be available, no confidence that they will be able to support the valuable service that is there.

One thing we need to recognise is that, without this medicentre after-hours GP service, services would not be available. Local general practitioners stay involved in and are attracted to our community knowing that there is an after-hours GP service that works hand in glove with their clinics, with their practices. They will volunteer to take on certain rostering responsibilities, knowing that will be an after-hours duty but limited and quite specific during the month. This is an outrage. This funding needs to be reinstated. How can the Rudd Labor government stand here in Canberra and say they are interested in public health when they are running down the very health model that has cost-effectively and efficiently supported after-hours GP access for decades? If it at least could revisit the billing numbers, the Medicare item numbers, that limit the payment of after-hours bonuses to after eight o’clock and have them start at 6 pm when the clinics become open and available, that would ease the financial pain. The Rudd Labor government needs to take after-hours GP services seriously in the Dunkley community and reinstate and provide certainty for funding that is available. (Time expired)

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