Victoria's peak body for doctors is urging whoever wins November's election to ramp-up support to GPs, to help stabilise the "dire" crisis facing the critical health workforce.
In its election statement circulated to parties, the Australian Medical Association's Victorian branch warned billions of dollars recently pumped into the health system by the current government was not enough to fix the "critical situation healthcare workers face on the ground right now".
Instead, it called for systemic reform, including a new division in the Health Department to improve interactions between hospitals and GPs.
"There has evolved what is now a substandard communication interaction between general practice and hospitals, to the detriment of Victorians' healthcare," the association said.
"This chronically poor interaction results in significant problems in many areas, including safety, equity and access, and gaps and duplication."
The doctors' union said the new general practice division should be headed by a specialist GP at the level of a deputy secretary.
It said it was "scarcely believable" that, in 2022, many public hospitals were still relying on fax as a form of communication, resulting in lost referrals, a lack of accountability and mountains of paperwork being printed, faxed and re-faxed.
In response, a government spokesperson said a new "Chief GP Adviser" position was already being created.
The spokesperson said the inaugural adviser would start in the next few weeks, following consultation with the sector.
Freeze urged on unexpected payroll tax for GPs
As GPs warn Australia's bulk-billing system is on the verge of collapse without a major boost to federal Medicare funding, the AMA is also urging the Victorian government to do its part to ease financial pressure on practices.
The Victorian branch said a recent court case had sparked fears that the model many GP clinics used to manage payments to doctors could become subject to "unanticipated payroll tax".
It said many GP clinics operated in a similar way to the business in the case, where medical practices received money from patients on behalf of the doctors and later distributed it to them.
"Imposing unplanned, unannounced payroll tax in this manner would necessitate some Victorian practices to abandon bulk billing and charge gap fees to Victorian patients to remain a sustainable and viable business," the AMA said.
The group has urged the next state government to protect general practice from additional payroll tax being retrospectively charged and to freeze any changes stemming from the court case for four years.
Need for new hospital in Albury-Wodonga 'stark'
As it called for a greater injection of funding for public hospital staffing to bring Victoria closer to the national average, the AMA said the need was "particularly stark" in Albury-Wodonga in the state's north-east.
"Members in the region report that Albury-Wodonga's public hospital is well past its use-by date and simply no longer fit for purpose," it said.
"Funding for a new facility should be prioritised as a matter of urgency."
In its recent budget, the Victorian government did not provide funding for a new Albury-Wodonga hospital, saying a master plan needed to be completed before funding could be committed.
The spokesperson said the government was also delivering a $36 million upgrade to Albury Wodonga Health's emergency department in partnership with the New South Wales government.
If it wins the November 26 poll, the Coalition has pledged $300 million towards a new hospital.
'Serious reservations' on mental health reforms
The AMA also used its election statement to register its "profoundly serious reservations" about the way the Victorian government has been implementing the recommendations of the mental health royal commission.
While the Andrews government has committed to implementing all of the commission's recommendations, including phasing out seclusion and restraint treatments over the next decade, in its submission, the AMA said it was concerned that clinical expertise had been sidelined, with a greater emphasis given to power imbalances and the human rights of patients.
The group said those were "important, but cannot be considered alone".
"There needs to be a balance achieved between a patient's rights, their health and the need to keep a patient and their carers physically safe," the AMA said.
"The narrow and limited communications that have taken place so far have not given appropriate weight to the genuine realities of caring for people who have very real and severe psychiatric illness."
Those comments come a few months after the peak group for mental health consumers in Victoria expressed frustration at the pace at which hospitals were phasing out restrictive interventions, warning they risked breaching people's human rights during their hour of greatest need.
The government's spokesperson said peak medical bodies had been "actively consulted" on all reforms in the mental health space.
Victoria's opposition has also been contacted for comment.
