Peak bodies representing doctors and nurses say the federal budget does little to address a health system fatigued from responding to Covid-19, and that a failure to provide enough money for workforce shortages in areas like aged care and disability will further exacerbate the strain.
The budget, handed down on Tuesday night, allocated $4.2bn in 2022-23 for the ongoing pandemic response, including $1bn for further rollout of vaccines, and $2.6bn to replenish the stockpile of personal protective equipment and rapid antigen tests in high-risk settings.
The budget papers predicted a fresh winter Omicron wave, with a combined spike in Covid and influenza infections expected to see increased rates of absenteeism and put pressure on supply chains.
However, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president, Dr Karen Price, said the budget will not do enough to address long-term issues.
“General practice is under enormous pressure delivering Covid-19 vaccines and soon we will be doing the same for influenza vaccines,” Price said.
“We are helping patients who have delayed or avoided care during the pandemic, including those with mental health issues amidst a looming mental health crisis in Australia. To give general practice a helping hand we need to fix workforce gaps, particularly in rural and remote areas, and increase Medicare rebates to reflect the cost of providing high-quality general practice care for all patients no matter their postcode.”
Price is also concerned that key components of the Primary Health Care 10 Year Plan remain unfunded, including voluntary patient registration which would encourage patients with chronic health conditions in particular to enrol with a general practice and nominate a regular GP. In return, GP clinics would receive block funding to improve the health of specific patient cohorts, such as those with diabetes.
The RACGP says voluntary patient registration would encourage continuity of care and provide greater support to patients with complex conditions.
“The budget provides $0.5m over four years to establish and maintain a governance and advisory group for the implementation of the 10 Year Plan,” Price said. “But we’ve already had three years of discussions and roundtables. We don’t need more of the same, we need action.”
Peak advisory body Catholic Health Australia (CHA), which represents not-for-profit Catholic aged care providers, said there was nothing substantial in the budget to address the workforce crisis in aged care.
CHA chief executive, Pat Garcia, said the failure to increase workforce remuneration meant attracting new people to the understaffed and fatigued sector and retaining staff would be difficult, and would increase pressures on the health and aged care systems.
The $49.5m allocated for aged care training places and clinical placements for nurses was not enough to address the extent of these workforce pressures, Garcia said.
“Additional training places are all very well, but the sector is struggling to attract and retain aged care workers because they are simply not paid enough for the essential and demanding caring role they perform for the Australian community,” she said.
“The government has previously announced that minimum staffing levels will be mandatory in residential aged care, but it is far from certain whether there will be the workforce available to meet these standards, let alone the additional workforce required for the significant increase in the number of home care packages and the needs of the ageing cohort.”
The Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association president, Karen Booth, also welcomed the inclusion of nursing placements in the budget but agreed the funding would not address an ageing nurse workforce, overwhelming workloads, and a lack of available nurses available to carry out preventive healthcare checks.
Booth added that thousands of nursing students were unable to graduate because they had been unable to secure the necessary clinical placement time in medical settings due to restrictions implemented during the pandemic.
“Australia is already struggling to meet the demand for healthcare in settings such as residential aged care homes due to a desperately short supply of primary healthcare nurses,” Booth said.
“The Morrison government’s decision to splash cash in a short-term sugar hit for aged care workers fails to address the issues that threaten Australia’s ability to meet the health needs of its citizens in years to come.
“One in four primary healthcare nurses already tell us they are leaving their jobs in the next couple of years, meaning we will have even less ability to keep Australia healthy in future decades.
“As a result, Australia is at risk of not having enough suitably trained primary healthcare nurses to staff aged care homes, general practices, and other primary healthcare settings in coming years.”