AMA VICDOC Autumn 2024 - Magazine - Page 4
FROM T H E P RESID EN T
AMA Victoria appreciates that our agenda is ambitious,
but now is the time to double down on a healthcare-led
recovery for our state. Victorians deserve no less.
-
system for the demands we face
today. Note the recent debacle
over management of an announced
public holiday!
Furthermore, the plight of
general practice remains genuinely
dire, for which the entire
community will suffer. General
practice shoulders over 90 per cent
of the healthcare burden in Victoria
yet receives the least attention
from state government. This simply
must change, and AMA Victoria is
advocating for this change. Funding
must be prioritised to create a
Division of General Practice within
the Victorian Department of
Health to ensure that the voice
and concerns of general practice,
across physical and mental health,
are embedded within the very
machinery of government, and
resources should be directed to
improve the interface between
general practice and our
hospitals, both public and private.
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AMA VI C TO RIA
Moreover, AMA Victoria is
profoundly concerned at the
trajectory of mental health reform
in this state: there is about to be
proclamation of a new Act recently
passed in parliament. Its essence is
profoundly anti medical. There must
be a fundamental re-orientation of
funding priorities towards acute
medically required care for serious,
urgent, complex, high-risk cases so
that those patients who are most
in need can obtain the treatment
and support they require. “Lived
experience” alone cannot help in
these most difficult of
circumstances.
AMA Victoria appreciates that
our agenda is ambitious, but now
is the time to double down on a
healthcare-led recovery for our
state. Victorians deserve no less.
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