NSW State Election

NSW State Election

The NSW State Election is scheduled to be held in March 2023. In the lead-up, AMA (NSW) is focused on building not only a better health system, but one that is among the best in the world.

AMA (NSW) IS URGING the incoming Government to not only improve healthcare in this state but making NSW a world leader in healthcare.  

AMA (NSW) is outlining four priorities for the 2023 election statement: the Best Resourced Health Services, the Best Care for Families, the Best Care for Rural Communities, and the Best Care for Doctors. 

Within each priority, we’re asking government to address these issues:  

• Workforce: implement solutions to address structural system workforce pressures resulting from sustained and growing demand due to demographic and non-demographic drivers. 
• Rural and regional health: Fund the recommendations outlined in the rural health parliamentary inquiry. Support rurally based training. Support later stage rotations for doctors-in-training – noting that for many trainees, they rotate during their early years of training. This limits the scope of services the trainee can provide and more importantly means trainees are experiencing rural and regional practice years prior to them being able to establish their practices. Ensure that where doctors are regionally based, they receive equal or greater financial support if they are required to rotate back into metropolitan areas than is currently provided in the Award for metro to rural rotations. Review the existing VMO Determinations, specifically those provisions relating to the Regional Support Package which have not been indexed. Ensure the Determinations appropriately reflect the added burden of regional and rural practice in terms of time on call and call back requirements.
• Paediatric care: Develop services for children across NSW to ensure that primary, secondary, and tertiary level care can be provided as close as possible to home as possible and consolidate highly specialised levels of care in such a way that is accessible to the whole state. Introduce new models and supports for training of the workforce to reduce duplication and improve healthcare outcomes.  
• Maternal care: Give babies the best start in life by supporting maternal first trimester screening program.
• Doctor wellbeing: address significant levels of burnout and fatigue in hospitals and expand protection of frontline health workers to include medical professionals in private practice. Support current workforce in rural and regional areas by implementing a payroll tax exemption for general practitioners. Give medical practitioners assurance they will be supported in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster with grant funding.

AMA (NSW) will be publishing a full statement soon and look forward to engaging members and decision makers on these issues.