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Peter Mac doctors slam government EBA inaction
25 September 2008
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre’s meeting of senior medical staff have passed a resolution condemning the State government’s lack of progress in offering a new enterprise bargaining agreement and failure to make hospital improvements that would benefit cancer patients and research into the disease.
The Peter Mac doctors said the Health Minister had been sitting on a review of public hospital medical staff for the past nine months and has yet to respond to any of the review’s key recommendations. The review notes that poor conditions and low morale in Victorian public hospitals are driving doctors away from the public sector
The doctors have taken their concerns to AMA Victoria.
The public hospital doctors’ enterprise bargaining agreement expired on 30 June and a new agreement is yet to be reached.
“We’ve been without an EBA for eleven weeks and our negotiations with the government are slow and inadequate,” AMA Victoria President Dr Doug Travis said. “The current government proposal does not offer pay parity with other states or address many of the major problems within our public hospital system.”
“Doctors don’t want the distraction of a long and drawn-out process; they want to concentrate on patient care. We have said all along that we are happy to reach a reasonable agreement early on and that offer remains open.”
AMA Victoria has been meeting hospital doctors across the state to seek feedback on the current enterprise bargaining proposal, hear concerns and discuss options for future action.
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre’s meeting of senior medical staff passed a resolution condemning the government’s failure to make hospital improvements, saying this lack of action will “adversely affect patient safety, health care quality and recruitment and retention of doctors in Victoria”.
“Sir Peter MacCallum believed that nothing but the best was good enough in the treatment of cancer. The State Government’s attitude is a sad indictment on a man whose vision and energy have helped so many people with this insidious disease,” Dr Travis said.
The Peter Mac doctors’ resolution calls on the government to make doctors a fair enterprise bargaining offer that brings Victorian medical salaries in line with other states as a matter of urgency and to “take action immediately to ensure that public hospitals can attract and retain the medical workforce to provide the care that Victorians need, and to train the next generation of doctors”.
A Peter Mac doctor who attended the meeting condemned the Minister’s inaction in implementing recommendations to ensure clinical training opportunities were available to junior doctors: “DHS bureaucrats can’t even recognise the importance of allocating time for specialists to be involved in training and medical research”, the doctor said.
Failing a meaningful response from the Health Minister the Peter Mac senior medical staff will meet in October to consider action.
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