In response to Robert Allan, medical director of the Phillip Medical Centre (Letters, August 14, p16), I would like to highlight a number of issues that as a former patient of the centre I feel could have been better handled.
Firstly, unlike Wanniassa patients, who it seems will be given priority treatment, those from Deakin and Weston Creek cannot make an appointment, regardless of their need to see their doctor.
This means that where a double appointment is needed, say, for workers compensation issues or where a doctor must fill out a government pension form, the centre insists on having patients wait without giving prior warning to the treating doctor that extra time will be needed. If a worker's compensation case manager needs to consult with the doctor he or she also has to wait with their client. Case managers are busy people and their time is wasted sitting in medical centres for hours when a simple appointment procedure could be and should be available. And as for the treatment and patient care by the doctors at the centre, in my opinion it is excellent.
The standard of treatment by the centre's doctors is not the issue the issue is having proper access to treatment and not being treated like cattle in holding paddocks.
Profits and losses are not the issue, nor is the cost for a consultation, as many ACT doctors bulk bill. What I suspect most patients need is access to their own doctor, which is not possible at the Phillip centre unless you live in Wanniassa.
And to answer Allan's question, ''I wonder where the 60,000 different patients who have attended our clinic in the past two years would have gone,'' this patient would have been very happy with the status quo.
David Cavill, Kambah
Dr Robert Allan, medical director of the Phillip Medical Centre, states (Letters, August 14) that he, other medical practitioners in his practice, and indeed general practitioners anywhere in Australia, work from 7am to 5.30pm (or the equivalent), and see 50 patients a day. He also says most GPs charge $60 per visit. Allowing for a 30-minute lunch break, that means they are clearing $300 each per hour.
Yet Dr Thinus van Rensburg (Letters, August 2, pB6) alleges GPs earn less than $50 an hour. Are we really expected to believe overheads for a suburban surgery account for more than $250 an hour, or $2500 per doctor, per day? And if administrative staff are earning more than medical practitioners, as van Rensburg says, then why aren't GPs leaving the profession in droves to sit behind the counter, answer the phone and manage files?
Professor Greg Jackson (Letters, August 5, p10) is quite right. The average income of most full-time Australian GPs is $160,000 per annum. He is also right in saying few medical practitioners in Australia have 10 years' tertiary education. They mostly do not have doctorates, have an extraordinary degree of flexibility in conditions of employment, and don't take the Hippocratic oath (contrary to popular belief).
They do, however, have fine training and deserve to be recompensed appropriately, as do all who make a career fostering the welfare of others.
The bleating disingenuousness of the van Rensburgs of this world should stop.
I look forward to the support of medical practitioners in my claim for the wages they enjoy (even at the spurious rate of $50 an hour), given that we academics, teachers and medical practitioners are pretty much equivalently educated and provide an equivalently valuable service to the community.
Jennifer Evans, Narrabundah
Jennifer Evans (Letters, August 13, p16) takes exception to a particular medical practitioner crying poor, as I have in two recent letters (August 5 and 8, p10 and p14), all in the context of the closing of the Wanniassa Medical Centre.
My point, and one of Evans's, was about remuneration being appropriate to one's university education, and she also points out that her profession as teacher is as significant as that of medical practitioners, held by some to be saints beyond pecuniary self interest.
I agree with her.
She mentions her more than 10 years of tertiary education, but whether she means having three or more university degrees or is including professional training and development (which is not university education), I am unsure.
In either event, she, like so many quality teachers, is underpaid and often undervalued, as I noted in a letter in February.
Her final sentiment was that as an educator she facilitates the careers of others. I could not agree more.
Perhaps ironically, I must confess to lecturing to medical students at university in my early career days when chemistry was compulsory in medicine.
Greg Jackson, Kambah
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