Posted by Melissa Maimann on May 17, 2009 in
Birth For further information, contact Melissa Maimann at Essential Birth Consulting.
Kate Benson Medical Reporter
May 15, 2009
SCORES of residents attended a public rally in the Blue Mountains yesterday to force the State Government to keep the hospital’s embattled maternity unit open.
The ward has been shut at short notice more than 120 times in the past 18 months because … a lack of available obstetricians and anaesthetists.
Staff and residents have been told the area health service was working hard to recruit more staff and keep the unit open, following a 2007 promise … that maternity services would be maintained.
But yesterday women from throughout the Blue Mountains gathered outside the hospital to protest against rumours the maternity and pediatric units would be shut permanently by November.
The hospital serves an area that has 80,000 residents, and draws more than 3 million tourists a year, but when it is shut patients have to travel to Nepean Hospital, 45 minutes away.
“This is our worst nightmare,” Katoomba’s deputy mayor, Janet Mays, said. “Monies were allocated [in this week's federal budget] to upgrade Nepean, making it quite clear that we are seen as nothing more than feeder suburbs, [and] that is offensive …”
… All seven midwives have quit in frustration because a plan to allow them to manage low-risk births, approved in November by NSW Health and due to start in July, is still in doubt.
It all seems a bit odd to me. Why not open the unit as a midwifery-led unit? High risk women can be cared for at Nepean. If this was the arrangement, women and their families would know the plan and feel more certainty in what might happen. The way it is currently, women don’t know if the unit will be open or closed when they go into labour. Or, open it as a birth centre.
Melissa Maimann, Essential Birth Consulting 0400 418 448
Tags: birth, hospital birth, midwife, Midwifery, Midwifery, Midwifery services, Public and private hospitals
Posted by Melissa Maimann on May 17, 2009 in
Birth,
Obstetrics For further information, contact Melissa Maimann at Essential Birth Consulting.
Link to article
PATIENTS paid more as a result of changes to the Medicare safety net which were meant to reduce out-of-pocket costs, a Government-commissioned study has found.
The extended Medicare safety net … was directly responsible for an average 2.9 per cent rise in fees charged by most specialists …
The findings of the report by the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation in Sydney have been used by the Government to justify its crackdown on excessive fees charged by some obstetricians, vascular surgeons and eye specialists …
… the study found the extended safety net not only spurred some specialists to charge much higher fees in the knowledge that patients would get most of the money back, but also benefited patients on higher incomes much more than those on lower incomes.
The safety net had … [provided] benefits that increased with doctors’ fees, regardless of how high those fees might be.
… The Government’s decision to cap safety net payments for some fees is expected to generate savings of $440 million over four years. The move has set the scene for a showdown between high-charging obstetricians, their patients and the Government, over whether the specialists will reduce their fees or expect patients to pick up hundreds of dollars in charges no longer covered by the safety net. An obstetrics leader, Andrew Pesce, has warned that the cap on fees which can be defrayed by the safety net would “significantly affect affordability” for most women under the care of private obstetricians.
… The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, has said that excessive fees had resulted in taxpayers funding million-dollar incomes for some specialists. The top-earning 10 per cent of obstetricians were each paid an average $1.1 million a year through Medicare, including $612,000 through the extended Medicare safety net, she said.
Melissa Maimann, Essential Birth Consulting 0400 418 448
Tags: birth, hospital birth, Obstetrics, Public and private hospitals