After-hours care falls short
17 Apr, 2012 12:00 AM
IF you need a doctor between 11pm and 7am you must go to an
emergency room at Blacktown, Hornsby or Hawkesbury public hospital and
join the queue.
There's always the phone (nurses and GPs give advice on the National After Hours GP Helpline) or you can visit Norwest Private's emergency department, where fees are not reimbursable — even for those who are privately insured.
There are only 55 general practices open for 10 or more hours a week during the after-hours period but that is across all western Sydney (264 of a total of 303 practices were contacted) — nowhere near enough, according to medical educators WentWest.
WentWest have found through careful analysis of western Sydney's health needs that in Rouse Hill there are no practices open after-hours and in the semi-rural area above Glenorie even a registered home-visiting is not available.
Parramatta's north-east is serviced by only one practice providing after-hours service — at Epping — and Baulkham Hills North could do with chemists that open longer.
But the real problem is finding GPs to work outside normal hours.
The five doctors' rooms at Round Corner Medical Centre in Dural operate at 95 per cent capacity with 12 GPs on rotation, but doctors find it difficult to cope with demand after hours, even turning people away on Sundays.
The centre began operating after hours three years ago with financial assistance from the federal government.
Peter Szekely, the centre's financial officer, said they aim to stay open until 9pm weekdays and 5pm on Saturday and Sunday.
The ideal, he said, would be to stay open till 10pm every night.
"But we don't always have doctors available to do these hours," Mr Szekely said.
"At the moment the only weeknights we can do are Monday and Thursday.
"If we could expand the premises we would, but we can't, so the only thing we can do is expand the hours."
Mr Szekely praised the GP placement program, saying two junior doctors had stayed on at his centre, and saw this as encouraging.
Dural is among the many suburbs in The Hills identified by the Department of Health and Ageing as being in a district of workforce shortage, defined as an area of Australia in which the population's need for healthcare has not been met.
The others are Annangrove, Beaumont Hills, Bella Vista, Kenthurst, Oatlands and Rouse Hill.
Beaumont Hills and Rouse Hill are also among the growth suburbs in The Hills, which is of major concern given The Hills population is expected to rise 1.94 per cent every year until 2031, bringing the total population from 177,245 to 255,270 people - a rise of 44.02 per cent — over the next 19 years.
WentWest will submit its first after-hours plan to the Department of Health and Ageing in May, highlighting these and other service gaps in the Western Sydney Local Health District, which stretches from Auburn in the east to Blacktown in the west and to The Hills in the north.
There's always the phone (nurses and GPs give advice on the National After Hours GP Helpline) or you can visit Norwest Private's emergency department, where fees are not reimbursable — even for those who are privately insured.
There are only 55 general practices open for 10 or more hours a week during the after-hours period but that is across all western Sydney (264 of a total of 303 practices were contacted) — nowhere near enough, according to medical educators WentWest.
WentWest have found through careful analysis of western Sydney's health needs that in Rouse Hill there are no practices open after-hours and in the semi-rural area above Glenorie even a registered home-visiting is not available.
Parramatta's north-east is serviced by only one practice providing after-hours service — at Epping — and Baulkham Hills North could do with chemists that open longer.
But the real problem is finding GPs to work outside normal hours.
The five doctors' rooms at Round Corner Medical Centre in Dural operate at 95 per cent capacity with 12 GPs on rotation, but doctors find it difficult to cope with demand after hours, even turning people away on Sundays.
The centre began operating after hours three years ago with financial assistance from the federal government.
Peter Szekely, the centre's financial officer, said they aim to stay open until 9pm weekdays and 5pm on Saturday and Sunday.
The ideal, he said, would be to stay open till 10pm every night.
"But we don't always have doctors available to do these hours," Mr Szekely said.
"At the moment the only weeknights we can do are Monday and Thursday.
"If we could expand the premises we would, but we can't, so the only thing we can do is expand the hours."
Mr Szekely praised the GP placement program, saying two junior doctors had stayed on at his centre, and saw this as encouraging.
Dural is among the many suburbs in The Hills identified by the Department of Health and Ageing as being in a district of workforce shortage, defined as an area of Australia in which the population's need for healthcare has not been met.
The others are Annangrove, Beaumont Hills, Bella Vista, Kenthurst, Oatlands and Rouse Hill.
Beaumont Hills and Rouse Hill are also among the growth suburbs in The Hills, which is of major concern given The Hills population is expected to rise 1.94 per cent every year until 2031, bringing the total population from 177,245 to 255,270 people - a rise of 44.02 per cent — over the next 19 years.
WentWest will submit its first after-hours plan to the Department of Health and Ageing in May, highlighting these and other service gaps in the Western Sydney Local Health District, which stretches from Auburn in the east to Blacktown in the west and to The Hills in the north.
Medicare Local defines after-hours as:
- before 8am and after 6pm weekdays;
- before 8am and after noon Saturdays;
- all day Sundays and public holidays.
- the unsociable after-hours period of 11pm to 7pm; and
- the sociable after-hours period which is all other after-hours times.
A map showing the current District of Workforce Shortage areas is available at: http://www.doctorconnect.gov.au/i nternet/otd/Publishing.nsf/Conten t/locator
Socrates says: While this article details the issues for the north-west of Sydney it can be replicated even more so for rural and regional areas like the Southern Highlands.
