For so many years, nurses have been viewed as doctors handmaidens, as subordinate professionals. Indeed, the way in which the medically-dominated Medical Benefits Schedule Review Taskforce (MBSRT) treated the 14 evidence-based, patient-focussed, recommendations of its own Nurse Practitioner Reference Group (NPRG) – namely, by rejecting all of them – suggests that for some medical practitioners, these images are still current enough for them to feel they can treat the nursing profession with disdain. (more…)
Category: Health
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Finding the origins of COVID-19 and preventing future pandemics
An international and independent investigation to examine the alternative hypotheses is urgently needed, and the US and Chinese governments should cooperate fully and transparently with such an inquiry. In the meantime, scientists, politicians, and pundits should acknowledge the uncertainties that currently prevail. (more…)
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The curse of coal and government health malfeasance
Policies which prolong the life of coal shorten the lives of many Australians and must be confronted – they are preventable deaths. It is distressing that ideology and ignorance have come to this. (more…)
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Can the success of the NHS vaccination rollout in the UK be applied in other areas of healthcare?
The success of the NHS covid-19 vaccination programme shows the benefits of national leadership and local delivery in healthcare. Working at speed and scale, the programme put in place a service delivery model that delivered a standard offer to the public with the aim of achieving equity in vaccine delivery and zero waste. The question now is whether these lessons can be applied in other areas of care as the NHS embarks on restoring non-covid services, arguably the biggest challenge in its history. (more…)
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Financial penalties for avoidable hospitalisations.
The 2020-25 Commonwealth-state hospital funding agreement requires the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority to consider penalties for excessive rates of potentially preventable hospitalisations. The new penalty would sit alongside existing penalties on states with higher-than-expected rates of ‘adverse events’ in hospitals.
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Australia’s Covid vaccine rollout, Part 4. A good outcome by Christmas is possible
A move away from AstraZeneca is inevitable in Australia’s vaccine rollout, brought on by the need to reach herd immunity and to resolve the blood clot concerns. We forecast plenty of Pfizer arriving from after September, and the possibility of completing a high efficacy vaccine rollout by December. For the coming months, though, the rollout will inevitably be slowed at which time all Pfizer doses should go to those remaining in the most at-risk groups. (more…)
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Dissecting the controversy around Medicare reform and a disappointing response from the ALP
Any plan to change Medicare — especially if it comes from a Coalition government — is bound to attract controversy. So when health minister Greg Hunt announced a fortnight ago that more than 900 items on the Medicare benefits schedule would be changed with just a month’s notice, the reaction was immediate. (more…)
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Australia’s Covid vaccine rollout, Part 3. In June 2021 we are at the crossroads
The first week of June will be significant in Australia’s Covid story. Victoria had entered lockdown on Thursday 27 May after a case of community infection arrived via Adelaide. Another more dangerous variant would also appear. Australians would react with more heading out to get a jab, but not in sufficiently large enough numbers. Pressures were building for the government to dramatically change its vaccine strategy. (more…)
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Australia’s Covid vaccine rollout, Part 2. What we’ve been delivered
At a press conference about the vaccine rollout in December, Health Minister Greg Hunt said, “our goal is to under-promise and over-deliver”. Over January and February, the rollout was mapped out for us. However, the problems that soon developed were not a case of ‘the best-laid plans’ going awry but more like a case of ‘no plans at all’! It was inevitable that what was promised would not be delivered. (more…)
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Should procedural specialists be the highest earning doctors in the nation?
Data shows that procedural specialist doctors earn more per year than many other professionals in Australia and that the highest earning doctors in Australia are surgeons and anaesthetists, earning almost twice what general practitioners (GPs) earn. Why is this so and can it be justified? (more…)
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Australia’s Covid vaccine rollout: what we were promised
How does the original Covid rollout compare with what we are experiencing right now and what we are likely to end up with? In Part 1 we look at what we were promised. In Part 2 we examine how the rollout collapsed. In Part 3 we find that at mid-year, significant changes to our rollout strategies are inevitable. In Part 4 we show that a successful Pfizer rollout completed by December is possible if the federal government is up to it. (more…)
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Rogue doctors and the good character test
With the death of former medical practitioner, Geoffrey Edelsten, one can predict that there will be commentators and journalists who will seek to laud him. Here is a different view. (more…)
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How Victoria’s lockdown finally got Australia in vaccination mode
The sluggish vaccination rates that we have witnessed in the weeks leading up to Victoria’s fourth lockdown have been attributed to Australians being happy to play a waiting game. The switch from vaccination apathy to vaccination frenzy, in the wake of Victoria’s fourth lockdown, provides a teaching moment. (more…)
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Is the expanding medical workforce meeting changing community needs?
After around 20 years of expansion in medical workforce supply (Geffen, 2014), what are the key issues facing the medical workforce today? When producing more doctors, it is essential to ensure the additional doctors are used to meet the population need for healthcare, rather than reinforcing a paradox of overtreatment and overdiagnosis for some of the population existing alongside undertreatment for those most in need. This includes trying to get the ‘right’ balance of the medical workforce between urban and rural areas, between specialties, and between generalism and specialised care. Flexibility and adaptation are central to this, and are key ongoing themes of the new National Medical Workforce Strategy. (more…)
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Regulating Alcohol in the Northern Territory: in whose interest?
Woolworths commissioned a report into its strategy to establish a major alcohol retail outlet in Darwin that questions standards of governance within both corporate Australia and the Northern Territory. (more…)
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Ageism and the secret to living a long life.
The Archibald is 100 and Peter Wegner has won the 2021 prize for his portrait of 100-year-old artist Guy Warren who commented, “One hundred years is a hell of a lot of experience. I’ve survived the Great Depression, a war, I’ve survived serious medical difficulties and I’ve survived COVID – touch wood. The secret to living a long life is you just have to keep living.” (more…)
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Competition isn’t improving the aged care sector
A new study finds more competition isn’t associated with better quality of care or lower prices in aged care, prompting policy reform to address sources of market failures.
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The Stench of COVID Coverups.
Most of us who read Pearls and Irritations are not virologists, mainstream media journalists, Americans, or Chinese. As the nasty details about the pandemic emerge, that’s just as well, if we want the truth.
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Covid and aged care: When you are in a deep hole, the most important thing to do is stop digging.
The bottom line is that the needs of older people cannot be met unless aged care is better integrated with hospitals and health care managed by states and territories. (more…)
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Was there a Wuhan lab leak? Why an inquiry won’t dig out the truth
A year ago, the idea that Covid-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan – a short distance from the wet market that is usually claimed to be the source of the virus – was dismissed as a crackpot theory, supported only by Donald Trump, QAnon and hawks on the right looking to escalate tensions dangerously with China…But under Trump, US officials were reportedly funding work at the Wuhan lab through a US-based medical organisation called the EcoHealth Alliance. (more…)
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The federal government’s Covid response: avoid responsibility for national quarantine
In its response to Covid, the Morrison government has achieved an almost perfect result in maintaining the Coalition’s record since 2013 of doing nothing, achieving nothing, solving nothing. No big projects, no great initiatives or memorable policies. Failure to tackle key issues such as fire, climate change and Covid. (more…)
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Dentist migration policy in Australia requires a new strategy
Are our dentist migration and assessment systems responsive enough to the Australian healthcare system’s changes and challenges? Do we have a robust oral health workforce planning system? In this article, we argue why Australia’s dentist migration policy requires a serious rethink.
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Why do Australians buy private health insurance?
All Australians have access to Medicare that covers free hospital treatment. So why do people still buy private hospital insurance? In April 2021, we surveyed Australians to ask them why they paid for private hospital insurance, and we found that many members purchased it for peace of mind, with this reason becoming more likely as Australians got older. (more…)
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Encouraging COVID complacency is a dangerous political game
Targets have been repeatedly missed and vaccination rates in Australia are disappointingly low. In addition to vaccine hostility and hesitancy, we now have vaccine complacency: ‘Why bother? – the closure of the border is keeping us safe.’ And the Morrison Government’s recent messaging is reinforcing, even encouraging, this complacency. (more…)
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WHO Chief decries ‘scandalous’ vaccine inequality where rich nations control ‘fate of the world’
“The pandemic is not over, and it will not be over until and unless transmission is controlled in every last country.”
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Radioactive trash – a tale of two Sydney suburbs
Australia is relatively clear of nuclear reprocessing waste problems. But the Sydney suburbs of Hunters Hill and Barden Ridge have radioactive wastes from uranium processing which have been sitting there for decades. A bill is now before the Senate addressing the issue. (more…)
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Where next for private healthcare?
The future of private health in Australia – both private hospitals and private health insurance – is under challenge. The proportion of the population with insurance has declined over the past decade. The insured population is getting older, which is putting upward pressure on insurance premiums, which leads to more people dropping out, especially younger people, creating a death spiral. Statistics released by the insurance regulator last week confirm that trend continues.
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Australia’s Pandemic Trap is Snapping Shut
The 2021-22 budget assumes a policy that Australia’s borders will remain more or less hermetically sealed until mid-2022. As recently as late last year, we were promised opening up by July 2021. ‘Hermit Australia’, ‘Fortress Australia’, name it what you will, the trap that the Morrison Government has led us all into is of their own making.
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Ageism in the time of Covid
The coronavirus pandemic must cause us to re-appraise the value we attach to the lives of others, especially vulnerable people and those who are old.
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All too convenient to blame the Health bureaucrats
Caroline Edwards, Associate secretary of the Commonwealth Health Department may have seemed churlish in refusing to accept that her department’s efforts in organising coronavirus vaccinations, essentially under her control, had been an abject failure. (more…)