Workforce questions undermine winter health plan

Peter Verschaffelt Workforce questions undermine winter health plan

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National’s health spokesperson Shane Reti is writing off the Government’s winter health strategy as weak and full of holes.

The 24-point plan includes initiatives to help support community care and reduce hospital demand, including support for pharmacies to treat minor ailments, hospital-in-the-home services, increased access to radiology service in the community and community rapid response tools.

Dr Reti says a lot of the initiatives already exist, there’s no implementation plan, and it doesn’t tackle workforce shortages.

“Speaking with the sector since it was announced, many of them are saying this is a wish list, this is not deployable, we see no pathway for any of this to happen and again fundamentally a large part of it comes back to who is the workforce that is going to do all this?” he says.

Dr Reti says it’s a poor result for a year of health reforms.

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