What’s the plan for health?

What’s the plan for health?

Weeks out from the State election and the sales pitch from major parties seems to be missing one key component.

After months of daily death counts and two solid years of pandemic reports dominating news headlines, there has been a noticeable dearth of health-related news. It appears the pendulum has swung the other way and the public’s appetite for health information has been replaced by stories on inflation and housing concerns.

While this is probably a natural response from a population that completely and fully exhausted itself conversationally on COVID, it’s disheartening that our politicians have also gone quiet on the topic of healthcare.

As I write this, the NSW Legislative Assembly has expired, and caretaker period has begun –marking the official start to campaigning. However, in the lead up to now, the discussion on health has taken a backseat.

The Coalition has stood by its Budget commitment to employ 10,000 more healthcare workers over four years and Labor has leaned into university fee subsidies for students who commit to the public system for five years.

But where is the commitment to the current workforce? What is the next government going to do to stop the exodus of healthcare workers to other States?

Just because there is a resistance to talk about health, does not mean the problems we’re facing in this sector have gone away. In fact, as anyone working in our hospitals or primary healthcare can attest to, they are getting worse.

AMA (NSW) released its election priorities document in late February and its focus is workforce. Whilst we acknowledge that the system needs more nurses, midwives and allied health practitioners, we strongly argue that it especially needs more doctors. 

Doctors are central to the care team and can’t be substituted out of the health system. 

AMA (NSW) will look for new ways to engage stakeholders and make our message public. We are seeking to meet our members in health-focused webinars. We have a couple events lined up in the pre- and post-election and we hope to continue the conversation about health with you, as there’s never been a more important time for doctors to speak up about their experiences in the health system. In this issue, along with reading about our Election Priorities document, NSW Hospitals: Advanced Life Support Needed, we have also included an Open Letter from the NSW Medical Staff Council Executive Committee. The letter details the commitment that doctors have to their hospitals and patients, as well as their exasperation of working in an overstretched hospital system. We have many challenges in our hospitals, but the solutions are there – we just need a Government willing to talk about it.