Queensland doctors threaten mass walkout of public hospital sytem

    Janelle Miles, Kelmeny Fraser
    The Courier-Mail
    February 18, 2014


SENIOR doctors are threatening to leave Queensland’s public hospital system en masse over the Newman Government’s decision to force them off a collective agreement and on to individual contracts.            

The public hospital specialists have described the contracts as “the single greatest threat to the medical profession in this country”, leaving them open to arbitrary dismissal and enforced shiftwork.

Doctors meeting throughout the state have unanimously passed resolutions opposing the contracts, saying they would hurt the public hospital system.

A Prince Charles Hospital memorandum obtained by The Courier-Mail says 80 per cent of the facility’s senior emergency department specialists have indicated they will resign or reduce working hours in the public sector if the contracts go ahead.    

The memo expresses concern recruitment of emergency specialists from interstate is showing signs of drying up.

Most of the hospital’s radiologists say they are “highly likely to leave” and the intensive care unit is also under threat of doctors heading interstate “in view of the contract situation”.      


Anger over the contracts has prompted the reformation of what’s known as the “Pineapple Group”, a body of doctors which formed about 10 years ago to lobby the Beattie government over pay and conditions when public hospital wages lagged behind other states, making it difficult to ­attract and retain specialists.


“They won’t let us see the contracts until we sign them.”

Health Minister Lawrence Springborg said the contracts were about increasing transparency and accountability under a system which had been “letting patients down”.

He said Auditor-General Andrew Greaves had exposed the way Queensland public hospital doctors were paid as being heavily flawed and a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Australian Medical Association federal president Steve Hambleton said doctors were already starting to quit Queensland’s public hospital system over the Newman Government’s “unfair contracts”.      

“If 20 per cent of them resign, there’s going to be enormous difficulty in providing services,’’ Dr Hambleton said. “There’ll be longer waits in emergency, there’ll be longer waits for elective surgery, there’ll be less experienced people in the hospital sector.

“And there’ll be reduced ability to train the next generation of doctors.”

Paediatrician Stephen Withers wrote in the Gold Coast Medical Association’s magazine that the contracts were “changing the face of medicine in Queensland”.

“The contracts may create a seismic shift in the provision of health care which will have a generational effect on the provision of health care for Queenslanders,” he wrote.



THIS IS NOT WHAT THIS DOCTOR ORDERED

RESPIRATORY specialist Dr Steve Vincent works about 60 hours a week treating as many as 200 patients.

He has an active file of more than 4000 cases covering everything from lung cancer to cystic fibrosis to the latest outbreak of tuberculosis.
Doctors threaten mass walkout

Cairns doctor Stephen Vincent says Health Minister Lawrence Springborg has declared war on doctors.

The 42-year-old Cairns father-of-two, is pretty much your average mild-mannered medico who has devoted his life to healing the sick.

But don’t call the senior medical officer a “lazy money hungry bludger’’ and not expect a fight.

“Springborg has declared war on all doctors,’’ said Dr Vincent, who earns $170,000 from Queensland Health. “If push comes to shove mass resignations are on the cards.’’      







His beef is that the Government is forcing all 4000 public health senior clinicians on to new contracts which are “unjust, immoral, and unethical’’.      

“As it stands, they won’t let us see the contracts until we sign them, they can move us around the state to work without notice, and we can be sacked on the spot with no reason. It is an insult that is beyond draconian.”

He spends a week on the road every month working in indigenous community clinics, is on call 24/7 and, for free, in his spare time teaches medical trainees and lectures undergraduates at James Cook University.

Help someone get a doctor.  The liberals industrial relations, make us sick.    

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I'm on Newman's side.

The rorting of the taxpayer-funded public health system by doctors is well within the scope of this being a case of endemic white-collar crime.

Individual contracts would mean ... accountability on the part of each doctor as an individual.

The racket that is involved in the steps I have to take to get myself on the table in a public hospital to have my kidney stones shattered is a criminal waste of public money.

Referral after referral after referral ~ all to make sure a nice little collection of medicos all come in for their chop of the Bulk Billing pie.

I've sat with 'specialists' for no more than 5 minutes at a time while they look at my plates from a Medical Imaging Centre ~ where the in-house doctor has written out a full report on my condition) ~ and then they've written out a Letter of Referral to the hospital where the lithotripsy is to be done.

5 minutes at a charge to the government of around $300 a pop. Absolute madness. A licence to print money.

And then the insane nonsense of having to renew your prescriptions at the doctor's each time ... instead of going straight to the chemist.

And now that the medical professions are flushed through with Third World ethnics needing to send money back to impoverished extended families back in the boondocks of rural China, Vietnam, and India ~ the rorting and dodgy billing has increased exponentially.

Good luck to Newman.

Yes, doctors do earn a very good income and many of them vote for the Coalition. But that does not mean that their employment conditions should be attacked. Doctors work hard in high school to get into medicine, spend up to seven years at university to become a doctor, and work hard when they start their degree. Doctors are entitled to far better treatment in employment than they are getting in Queensland.

Kat wrote on Feb 18^th, 2014 at 7:50pm:


Yeas, that is exactly what they should do.  Plenty of jobs available for them outside the public system.

It would be great to see the Lawyers do the same.  They have zero to lose, because the work does not evaporate......The Can't will have to ask the same blokes to advise/represent him on exactly the same work.....at private professional rates.