KRudds reform proposal - do we care?

I was lucky (on unlucky) enough to be working from home last Wednesday when the PM hit the National Press Club to launch the National Health And Hospital Network. Mum and Dad were down from NSW for the week and, with mum out working everyday, I took pity on Dad and spent the day at home. Dad, as some of you may remember, is quite debiitated with COPD, diabetes and atrial fibrillation and is very confined to the house. Dad has always been very politically active and is a passionate watcher of Questions Time and the National Press Club.

So we sat down to watch the address, not quite knowing what to expect. And it was a big, bold and some say provocative announcement. Does it have anything to do with us??

The hospital network part does not particularly have mcuh to do wiht general practice but it will allow nurses at the hospital level input into determining local priorities.

Not so prominent in the speech but in the document was the fact that the Commonwealth intends to fund 100% of primary health care. They already fund general practice but this would now include services such as Maternal and Child Health, drug and alcohol, home health services, mental health services, palliative care etc. Currently about 4.2billion is spent annually through general practice by the Commonwealth and 4.2billion through the state governments for the other services.

For nursing there are several possible ways this could play out. we could see merging of like services e.g. MCH nurses into general practice/superclinic models, greater collaboration between general practice and domiciliary nurses. Where services are duplicated e.g. 4 year Healthy Kids Check and local MCH 3yr old checks, we could see a logical rationalisation. Potential advantages for nurses are greater collaboration and interraction with our nursing colleagues in other settings, and sharing of clinical knowledge and expertise. I am sure many of you will see positives in this scenario and think of examples where services for patients can be improved

While we are yet to see what is proposed more specifically in primary health care, this is a promising start.

On a personal note it was fun to point out to Dad who was who in the Press Club audience. For the first time in ages, it gave me pause to think how far APNA has come in interracting with the relevant players in that I was able to identify who many of the people were, that we had met with them etc. But we look forward to the day that we are invited to be in the audience for such a launch....