Blog
President’s Blog: What’s in store for 2024?
Monday December 18, 2023
I have been seriously impressed in my short time as President by how much the AMA (WA) achieves, publicly and behind the scenes. An oft-repeated internal gripe is that we don’t celebrate or publicise many of our achievements to our members. I believe this is partly due to the humility of our team, and partly because once one issue has closed, we launch straight into the next, rather than reflecting on it.
2024 promises to be a busy year. With our Log of Claims finalised courtesy of our diverse, broadly representative Bargaining Committee, the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement negotiations will begin in earnest for public hospital doctors. The overarching focus is on making employment within WA Health attractive and competitive for doctors in training, specialists including general practitioners, and career medical officers.
Separately, we will finalise permanency arrangements for senior practitioners, and will continue working with WA Health on progressing training-length contracts for DITs.
We will continue working with private hospitals and insurers to advocate for equity of access by private specialists to enable all forms of procedural care to be delivered, and reduce pressure on the public system.
Our active pursuit of fair recognition of the range of often unremunerated services provided by GPs to Western Australian patients will also continue.
Our DIT Practice Group will again run the Hospital Health Check Survey, an incredibly useful and influential tool that provides transparency to would-be employee doctors across our public and private hospitals.
And global threats to human health, including antimicrobial resistance and climate change, look like looming large on our public health advocacy agenda, as will access to healthcare by marginalised groups locally.
From the privileged position of being able to see first-hand most of what our team does, I am very proud. I’m glad that many of our staff will enjoy a break over coming weeks. We also can’t do any of this work without our members. So, thank you for being a member in 2024 and beyond.
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