Beneath the Drapes. August 2007
Media and Publications officer Coby Pearson has left Osborne Division of General Practice after nine years of service...
LATEST ARTICLES
July 2007
Rate your mates
In the tradition of popular websites such as "Rate Your Teacher.com", new website "Rate MDs.com" has been franchised into Australia from the US (where else?). The site encourages patients to rate their doctors on a scale of 1 to 5 on their punctuality, helpfulness, and knowledge. According to the Herald Sun, 270,000 US doctors have been rated on the site and some have sued patients for libel because of less-than-flattering comments. As of this writing (late June), six WA GPs and one surgeon had been rated by their patients. Five scored perfectly on all counts (showing there is such a thing as the perfect doctor!) while one GP was given a "grumpy face" score of 2 out of 5. Draw your own conclusions at http://au.ratemds.com.
Samples at the door, kids
Drug testing is in vogue. Random screening is the norm in the mining industry and the AFL has come under pressure from the government to tighten its testing procedures (Ben Cousins, anyone?). In turn (and in spite), the AFL players association proposed random drug testing of pollies and bureaucrats. But is drug testing in the wider community such a ludicrous idea? Perth doctor George O'Neil doesn't think so. George sees the pointy end of drugs through his addiction treatment clinic and has called for high school students to be regularly screened for drugs. ‘Ice' and amphetamines are rampant on our streets and yet the best the government can come up with is this month's drug summit. How about less talk and more action?
HDWA's dirty linen
Keeping its dirty linen well out of sight seems to be the WA Health Department's favoured approach ...
Read More...
Beneath the Drapes. July 2007
Dr Peter Silberstein was named in this year's Queen's Birthday honours for "service to medicine, particularly as a paediatric neurologist, and through executive roles with disability support organizations." Dr Mike Daly was honoured for "service to medicine, particularly to veterans in the fields of counselling and stress related illness."
Ms Lorraine Glover, previously sales and marketing manager at Visiomed, has been promoted to executive manager with responsibility for "coordinating the integration of the company's operational divisions and providing support in the areas of marketing and investor relations".
Mr Scott Thompson has taken over ...
Read More...
Michael Malone – iiNet founder
iiNet co-founder and managing director Michael Malone is the epitome of the technology-based rags-to-riches success story that fuelled the Internet boom of the 1990s. Read More...
June 2007
Canadian cash cow
Canadian operation www.mdBriefCase.com.au is now targeting Australian doctors, medical students and nurse practitioners with free CME activities. As elsewhere, ‘free' means financed by the pharmaceutical industry while the RACGP and ACCRM are paid to accredit. Heavy promotion is through regular email broadcasts and prizes offered to survey participants, with results used to fine tune content and provide feedback to sponsors. Its all about creating awareness around a product or service within a clinical area - educational grants generate particular content, usually from specialists, paid by mdBriefCase to write independently with "AMA standards for scientific validity, objectivity and completeness" whatever that is.
Govt fat burn fans
Aussies are fat, with 80% dying from preventable diseases. A stunning proactive move by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has been the 4-year Australian Better Health Initiative ($250m from the feds and $24.6m from State coffers). Even the federal opposition has a new shadow minister for Sport and Recreation and Health Promotion in Senator Kate Lundy - to help people live healthy, active lives and cut the estimated $1.5 billion preventable disease bill for Oz. Wow! The public sector Australian Health Promotion Association is trumpeting support, with eyes on the new preventive health budget no doubt. They run an annual conference and publish the Health Promotion Journal of Australia to add science to what we already know.
Kalamunda curtailed
Despite earlier talk of a GP-focussed community hospital at Kalamunda, the reality is ... Read More...
Beneath the Drapes. June 2007
Long term trustee Mr Don Good has been appointed Chairman of Trustees for St John of Good Health Care, replacing Sister Isobel Moran who held the role for seven years. It may be a sign of the times that an accountant is taking over from a nun.
Still at St John of God, Ms Anna Roberts has been appointed inaugural Mental Health Program Coordinator ... Read More...
May 2007
Medical Forum's caesarean snowball
Our April feature on WA's escalating caesarean section rates has gathered a lot of media attention in the last few weeks. The story was first picked up by The West at the start of April and then reappeared on the front page after Easter, with Health Minister Jim McGinty touting a tough new policy on elective caeseareans to arrest the state's 33% c-section rate. Even TV channels picked up the story. With all this attention, it looks like the elective caesearean could be headed the way of the circumcision and no longer performed in the public system for non-medical reasons.
Masters of lying low
Perth's recently touted Masters of General Practice conference has fallen through, with rumours that lacklustre registration numbers were to blame. Flyers only reached GPs and businesses in late December, giving potential delegates less than eight weeks to get their act together. Not surprisingly, the organisers have been keeping low, but from what we hear, the conference has not been officially cancelled, merely postponed ... indefinitely.
Where's the wellness?
Where should health consumers go to attain wellness? Well, according to HBF's new Wellness cover ... Read More...
Beneath the Drapes. May 2007
RPH's head trauma surgeon Dr Sudhakar Rao has been appointed as WA"s first Director of Trauma Services. Dr Rao established WA's first registry of trauma data 12 years ago and has been instrumental in the planning of trauma services at the new Fiona Stanley Hospital.
Dr Steve Patchett, former acting Director of the WA State Forensic Mental Health Service, has been appointed as ... Read More...