A 2020-2021 productivity commission report on government-funded health services showed thatmore than a third of all emergency department patients last year had conditions that could have been treated outside hospital.

In a communique following the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce’s first meeting last month,Health Minister Mark Butler said:“There is no doubt that primary care around the country is in a parlous state.”

The communique outlined the taskforce’s five focus areas:building the healthcare workforce,multidisciplinary care that used the full skills of nurses,pharmacists and allied health professionals,new care models that fostered stronger relationships between patients and practices,harnessing technology,and universal access to inclusive and patient-centred care.

Australia Medical Association vice-president and taskforce member Dr Danielle McMullen said the taskforce wouldn’t need to start from scratch. The former federal government’s10-year plan for primary care,released on budget night in March,is the product of “unprecedented cooperation” between peak medical and healthcare groups,McMullen said.

The plan sketches out major reform,including a shift from an illness-centric and fragmented system towards a prevention and wellbeing model that is integrated,multidisciplinary,and focused on “what matters to patients”,rather than “what is the matter with patients”.

One key pillar of the plan is a scheme known as voluntary patient enrolment (VPE),whereby a patient would enrol with a general practice,and the practice would get an annual payment for that enrolment or other benefits.

Implementing that patient enrolment plan is the AMA’s top priority going into Friday’s meeting,AMA President Steve Robson said last week.

Skinner said it was a mistake to characterise the crisis facing emergency departments as simply a lack of available bulk-billing GP appointments on a given day.

“This is the result of decades of underfunding and under-resourcing primary care,” she said. “We’re seeing people with chronic and complex illnesses who have deteriorated to the point where they need a hospital admission because they haven’t been able,or can’t afford,to access that care in the community.

“Then there are no hospital beds available for them because there are other people occupying those beds who can’t be discharged for the same reasons,” she said.

CEO of Australian College of Nursing Adjunct Professor Kylie Ward said the healthcare system could not afford to continue on its trajectory where emergency departments were overwhelmed by patients with conditions that should have been avoidable.

“We need to think about how we can build a fairer health system that acknowledges what is causing some of these chronic health problems in the first place,” Ward said.

The Labor government has not endorsed the unfunded plan,but McMullen said “Minister Butler has shown through the establishment of the taskforce,and the $750 million downpayment,that he is committed to significant primary care reform”.

The taskforce is scheduled to report to the federal government at the end of 2022.

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