Happy Friday! It’s been another busy week here at federal AMA, and I’ve spent much of it in Canberra progressing several important pieces of work on behalf of you and our patients.
You will have seen that we released our submission to the Pharmacy Board’s consultation on pharmacist prescribing . I want to be really clear: this isn’t about turf protection. It’s about patient care, quality use of medicines, and ensuring that any changes to prescribing come with the right clinical governance and collaboration.
We all recognise the challenges with access to healthcare, and reforms like 60‑day dispensing aim to help reduce unnecessary visits for stable chronic conditions. But access must also be about quality and safety.
The current proposal is a step too far, with no strong framework for coordination or shared care. There are models — like RN delegated prescribing or some international pharmacy prescribing models — that include proper oversight and medical involvement. This proposal doesn’t. But the proposal being put forward by the pharmacy board has no guardrails and is barely two pages long. That is unacceptable for a high-risk, new expansion of scope.
Doctors are essential in managing acute, chronic, and complex disease, and pharmacists are an incredibly important part of that team, but you can’t cut the doctor out.
With Parliament sitting this week, I had the chance to meet again with the Health Minister Mark Butler. We discussed specialist fees and the importance of adequate access to public hospitals. Improving access requires coordinated effort across federal and state systems, including funding, training capacity, and public outpatient performance. Workforce supply and distribution remain major priorities for us. We continue to push for a health workforce agency because we need better levers to understand where our workforce is, what work they’re doing, and how to attract more doctors into areas of need, including rural and regional communities.
We also touched on primary care. I reiterated that doctors are increasingly being asked to do more with less, and that any system reform must come with adequate funding to ensure sustainability. We need strong engagement with the sector, especially with major initiatives like Thriving Kids. We’ve asked for more information so the profession can be properly informed about these significant changes.
I also met with Dr Mike Freelander MP to discuss the Parliamentary inquiry into access and affordability of medical specialists. Our message remains that access to specialist care is a system problem, not simply a fee problem. Workforce shortages, inadequate training capacity, underperforming public outpatient services, and Medicare rebates that haven’t kept pace with costs are driving reduced access and rising out‑of‑pocket costs. Patients — particularly in rural and regional areas — are increasingly forced to choose between lengthy public waits and paying privately. Medicare was designed for a different era, and indexation has lagged inflation and wage growth for decades. We support transparency and informed financial consent, but the real focus needs to be broader reform: workforce planning, Medicare funding, public hospital capacity, insurer accountability, and maintaining a sustainable private sector. Innovation should centre on integrated care, telehealth, outreach, shared care, rapid GP access to specialist advice, and better referral systems. And we continue to distinguish between affordability and egregious billing — two very different policy problems requiring different solutions.
I also caught up with the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing Secretary Blair Comley yesterday to continue many of those same discussions on our core priorities: workforce, access to specialists, and sustainable system reform. As the detail of medical cost finder changes take shape, we are right there at the table to make sure they make sense for doctors and for patients. We also reminded him that the department has just been handed another 12 months to sort out assignment of benefits, so we can’t leave it to the last minute again. The department creates the policy for government to sign off on, so it is critical that the doctors voice is heard at both the departmental and ministerial levels.
I also met with Medibank this week to hear more about their primary care investments and to reinforce our concerns about vertical control. Australians deserve strong value from their private health insurance, but clinical autonomy and patient choice must remain central. We support investment in primary care, prevention, multidisciplinary teams, and models that give patients more time with their usual GP. But insurer ownership or control of primary care services creates structural conflicts of interest that can’t be managed through voluntary assurances. Any expanded insurer role must include statutory safeguards protecting autonomy, transparency, competition, universal access, and independent oversight. This is why we continue to call for an independent Private Health System Authority and clearer rules around vertical integration.
I’ll be away on leave next week so you’ll all enjoy a well-deserved break from my ramblings. Take care, and I’ll be back the week after!
