For rural patients and doctors

The Rural Doctors Association of Victoria (RDAV) has called for a better deal for Victoria’s rural patients and doctors when it comes to funding for emergency care at Victoria’s Urgent Care Centers (UCCs), saying that the current system is “manifestly unfair” to both patients and doctors.

RDAV contributed to – and endorsed – the recommendations put forward by the Rural Workforce Agency of Victoria (RWAV) in its recently released RWAV Statement on Urgent and Emergency Care in Rural Victoria.

In the statement, RWAV warned: “The current emergency health care system and models in rural Victoria are unsustainable and do not meet the needs of small rural communities.

People living in rural Victoria have less consistent and sustained access to emergency care.

Among a series of recommendations, RWAV called on the Victorian Government to: “Establish sustainable, context-specific models of emergency care that are effectively governed and co-designed with the local rural community and its professional workforce… and financing models that ensure workforce capacity and capability with appropriate infrastructure.

Call for reform

RDAV Acting President Dr Louise Manning said RDAV has been calling for significant reform of rural emergency care for many years.

“Victoria’s small rural hospital urgent care centers are, by any other description, the emergency department of local rural hospitals – but it is in the Victorian government’s interest to pretend they are not. not,” she said.

“Rural UCCs are located in small rural hospitals, doctors who work in rural UCCs are expected to have a high level of emergency skills (and they are accredited by the hospital to ensure this), nursing staff who work in the UCCs are the hospital staff and the UCCs use the hospitals’ clinical supplies and equipment.

“Yet when it comes to the financing arrangements for care provided in UCCs, it is incredible that they are not considered part of the hospital: local rural doctors are expected to bill the patient overall for their time and their services (which represents a financial cost). disadvantage for the doctor) or bill the patient privately (which represents a financial disadvantage for the patient).

“For the same care in an emergency department in Melbourne and Bendigo, the care is absolutely free to the patient and the doctor is paid fairly – without having to charge the emergency department patient a full fee or accept a fee lower than those of his urban colleagues for the same care.

So why is the Victorian government denying rural patients and their doctors the same treatment as patients and doctors in Melbourne and regional towns?

“Recommendation 37(c) of the recent mid-term review of the National Agreement on Health Care Reform (an agreement to which the Victorian Government is a signatory) states: Ensure that doctors providing health care services emergency services in rural hospitals are properly paid and that patients who go to the emergency room are properly paid. no refundable fees.

“Clearly this is not happening in Victoria – either rural doctors are being shortchanged or rural patients are.

“RDAV is urging the Victorian Government to reform the current approach to rural urgent care so that patients who present at urgent care centers in rural Victoria can access the emergency care they need. they need without having to pay for them, and the doctors providing this service are paid in line with their colleagues in Melbourne and Bendigo.

“The current agreement demonstrates a huge lack of respect by the Victorian Government for both rural Victoria residents and the state’s rural doctors – it is high time this grossly unfair arrangement be replaced by a much fairer agreement.

This article appeared in Buloke timesJune 4, 2024.