The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says it will reject any government proposals that would limit a person’s ability to use private health insurance for treatment in a public hospital. President Dr Michael Gannon warned that such a move would restrict ...
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Giving Australians the death they’d prefer
In 2004, chief executive Kim Macgowan was chatting with The District Nurses team and came across a student nurse who was sobbing. The nurse felt she had just made the last visit to one of the service’s clients. The man ...
More »Health leaders launch call to action on too much medicine
Australians are being overdiagnosed and overtreated and it needs to change, say leading Australian clinicians, consumers and policy makers. In a statement, endorsed by the Consumers Health Forum, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Royal Australian College of General ...
More »Opportunity knocking
The federal government’s budget boost to healthcare spending will create more jobs in the sector, opening positions in management and administration that will prove financially rewarding for health professionals with postgraduate degrees. The health budget is significant, accounting for about ...
More »AHHA, other peaks call for marriage equality for better health
The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA) has joined a host of leading health organisations calling on the Australian Government to make marriage equality a reality. AHHA let its stance be known via a recently released Position Statement on Marriage ...
More »GFC aftershocks felt by nurses, tied to missed care: paper
Following the global financial crisis (GFC), it was expected that countries would tighten their purse strings, including within the welfare state, but is this austerity making patients sicker? Researchers, led by emeritus professor Eileen Willis from Flinders University, unpacked this ...
More »ED clinicians to take part in My Health Record pilot
The Australian Digital Health Agency has announced an emergency department My Health Record pilot to develop a model that optimises clinician access to patients' health information, such as medicines, diagnostic test results and GP consultations, that may not otherwise be available ...
More »#BringThemHere – we will help
An Australian not-for-profit health and aged care organisation has reaffirmed its willingness to provide medical support and healthcare to asylum seekers currently held in offshore detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. St Vincent’s Health Australia (SVHA) has lent its ...
More »Workplace violence on the rise in Queensland: survey of nurses
Around half of Queensland’s nurses and midwives say they have experienced workplace violence in the three months prior to a survey of state union members. This is up from around 40 per cent reported in 2001. The survey of 2397 ...
More »Wyong Hospital to remain public, more work to be done: union
New South Wales health minister Brad Hazzard has announced that Wyong Hospital will remain in public hands, in a reversal of the state government's plan to move towards a public-private partnership. The announcement follows 10 months of campaigning from the state nursing ...
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