Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to announce to the House the signing of the GP after-hours service agreement for the Hunter region. This has been long negotiated. The program was started in 1998. The very first pilot program was at Maitland Hospital. I was fortunate to be involved in that at the very beginning and secured some $5 million worth of funding to allow it to start. That is now rolled out in hospitals across the Hunter and, indeed, other areas in Australia. I would like to acknowledge the hard work of Dr Arn Sprogis—who is the Executive Director of the Hunter Urban Division of General Practice and who has primary responsibility for the GP after-hours service—and of some of the team from within the department of the Minister for Health and Ageing, particularly Deborah Milner, Kaye Sperling, Jennie Roe and Megan Morris. I can understand that perhaps Arn Sprogis is not the easiest person in the world to deal with. However, he has a strong passion for the health care of those in our community and that is why I support him.

This new funding model will work better for the GPs in our region. There will be cash funding in excess of $7½ million and that will be topped up. When people go to the after-hours GP service or receive after-hours GP service visits in their homes, there will be bulk-billing applied on top of that. The MBS rebates will be applied to that as well. We are seeing a different mix of funding but there will be no disadvantage. I note that, as always, certain organisations complain that this will require more paperwork but it will also provide greater accountability and perhaps more accurate tracking of those who come along to the after-hours GP service.

We need to focus on the benefits to the doctors in the Hunter, who prior to this program being established in 1995 were on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If they wanted to take some time out, they were forced to hire a locum to take over their shift. Doctors are now scheduled on for perhaps one night per week—in some cases two nights per week—at the various hospitals throughout the Hunter, and it gives them quality of life at home and a weekend life. We often hear, and it is true, that in the broader Hunter and particularly in regional and rural areas it is hard to attract doctors because of the lifestyle risks that there are: constantly being on call, call-outs in the middle of the night and the effect on their family and social life. This has been a great plus. I congratulate the originator of the program—that is, the Hunter division of GPs—on their foresight.

There have been well over 100,000 visits to the division after-hours GP service, and well over 90 per cent of those people have been seen within 30 minutes of going to the hospital. This has also had the added effect of reducing the demand in the emergency waiting rooms. For a lot of the procedures, people are first checked out by triage nurses, appointments are made and then people see the doctor, but a lot of the minor things that chew up a lot of time in an emergency waiting room are able to be dealt with by the GPs. It is of great benefit not only to the GPs, who are not being called out in the middle of the night, but to our emergency departments. It has seen reductions of around 16 to 19 per cent, depending on the hospital, and a reduction in categories 4 and 5 patients during the clinic hours, which has reduced the stress on the beds.

I also acknowledge that only in a very small capacity is Hunter New England Health contributing to this program. The lion’s share of the funding is being picked up by the Commonwealth government. Also in this new funding agreement, which will go until 30 June 2008 when all programs are to be reviewed, will be a review mechanism. Should the funding levels drop below the agreed standard because of lack of visitations, there will be an adjustment in payments, but if there is a higher number of people coming through and more money coming through the door due to bulk-billing, the money will be agreed as well. (Time expired)