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AMA opts out of intervention

By Melissa Jenkins

14 June 2008 - AUSTRALIA'S peak doctors' group will drop out of the Northern Territory intervention and has blasted the Federal Government for relying on altruism to prop up the initiative.

As relations between the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and the Government sank to a new low today, its president Rosanna Capolingua said the group had not put in a bid for a new $10 million contract to recruit doctors for the intervention.

The news comes as Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance NT accused the AMA of profiting by about $150,000 under its current contract with the Federal Government, which expires on June 30.

The AMA's Queensland and Western Australian branches recruited GPs and other health professionals to go to the territory for a fee of about $1300 per person.

Dr Capolingua said the fees were to cover costs associated with recruitment and the AMA was not profiteering.

She said the AMA had not submitted a bid for the new two-year contract with the Federal Government to establish a Remote Area Health Corps for the intervention.

The deadline for tender submissions was June 10.

"It's too costly and too difficult to work with the Commonwealth," Dr Capolingua said.

"It is an exercise that has been very difficult, certainly is not one that generates profit, not done at the level the AMA did, anyway," she said.

Dr Capolingua said recruiting doctors for the intervention involved ensuring they had the right skills, were registered, had adequate insurance and police checks.

"The Government would often call at very short notice, like Thursday or Friday, and ask for doctors to be ready to be deployed by the Sunday," she said.

"We didn't go in there to make money. We went in there to make sure that the initiative actually delivered what it needed to deliver."

Dr Capolingua denied the AMA was turning its back on indigenous people in the NT.

She said the AMA had led the way for the past decade on raising awareness about the parlous state of Aboriginal health and would never abnegate its responsibility to indigenous Australians.

"The Government has got to stop, the Government and all of us – Australians – have got to stop looking at the indigenous health problems as a humanitarian initiative," she said.

"We have to take ownership of this. These are our people – they're not some third world country that we're sending Medecins Sans Frontieres doctors to.

"They are our responsibility – our people. We have let them down and we have to invest appropriately to change what's been going on. And that means there has to be accountable funding that's realistic and not reliant on the altruism of doctors or others that want to help."

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon said the Government was spending $99 million over the next two years to expand primary care services in the Northern Territory and establish the Remote Area Health Corps.

"The Government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the Northern Territory to ensure that health services are placed on a sustainable footing, with the aim of dramatically lifting health standards," she said.

Relations between the AMA and the Government have been strained since Labor won office in November, with Dr Capolingua and Ms Roxon clashing over the Government's alcopops tax hike at the AMA's national conference in Hobart last month.

The AMA is campaigning heavily against the Government's GP Super Clinics, a Labor election promise, and the doubling of the Medicare surcharge levy threshold.

Ms Roxon ignited a debate over the role of GPs this week, directing doctors to brace themselves for changes and raising the possibility of a greater focus on nurses and allied health professionals providing Medicare-subsidised care.

Source: The Melbourne Herald Sun

Further information: NT Intervention issues page - includes news index and external links

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