[LINK] Online medical consultations

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Tom Worthington
> Sent: Tuesday, 17 August 2010 9:56 AM
> To: Link list
> Subject: [LINK] Online medical consultations
> 
> 
> The Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that if 
> re-elected, the ALP government would provide $400M for online medical 
> consultations: 
> <http://www.alp.org.au/agenda/health-reform/connecting-health/>.
> 
> Given the political debate over what use a high speed NBN fibre optic 
> network was to the community, this is a case of prescribing 
> fibre in the 
> diet. ;-)
> 
> The ALP's "Connecting Health: Modernising Medicare by 
> providing rebates 
> for online consultations" policy proposes providing Medicare 
> rebates for 
> online consultations. These would not just be for general 
> practitioners, 
> but for specialists as well. The policy is targeted at rural, 
> remote and 
> outer metropolitan areas, but may also appeal to city dwellers.
> 
> The proposal envisages $250M being spent on half a million "services" 
> over four years. Also $57M will be available to help GPs and 
> specialists 
> set up for online consultations and $35M for training.
> 

Curious.

In 1995 there was an australia wide version of this proposal.
Of course it was intended for only rural people and the funding was only
500,000 per year.

Archive Article here.....
http://rsj.e-contentmanagement.com/archives/vol/4/issue/2/article/1909/n
ational-rural-health-unit

The NRHU successfully tracked indigenous and non-indigineous outback
persons and made their casefiles available via email... [to of course
appropriate medical personnel.]

Funding died and the project went to sleep.

400M versus 500K.

I've heard of inflation, but that borders on the ridiculous. 
Then again, it translates to only $18.00 each Australian.

Year  Money           Patients     Per Patient
1994     $500,000.00   2800000      $ 0.17
2011 $400,000,000.00  22000000      $18.18

So I guess it won't work very well this time round either.

Oh, and all nodes had access to the medline database.

Sad isnt it. 
Adopt a policy. Change Government. Discard a policy. Add some zeros,
offer policy again.

TomK