Well, you can’t say it’s been dull. See which articles and issues have caught your attention through 2024.
Whichever way you cut it, 2024 has been a hell of a year in GP Land.
Scope of practice, underfunding and undervaluing of general practice, physician assistants, pharmacy prescribing trials, AHPRA, Medicare fraud (or lack thereof), bulk billing (or lack thereof), those bloody urgent care clinics, and AI scribes – all these stories and more have been our honour to bring you.
One of the beauties (and nightmares!) of digital journalism is we get to see what is grabbing your interest in real time. It’s the nature of the beast that the longer a story is online the more clicks it gets, so it’s no big surprise that stories published in January can, superficially at least, seem more important than ones published two days ago.
Nevertheless, there are some notable spikes throughout the year when we’ve really hit a nerve.
GLP1-RAs
The wonder drug of our day, apparently.
In February, our senior reporter and deputy ed Holly Payne wrote a yarn called Ozempic scammers post strange red liquid to patients. It told a tale of unlabelled vials of red liquid being sent in unmarked white boxes, through the mail by a company called, variously, “Compounding Pharmacy Australia” or “The Australian Compounding Pharmacy”.
Apart from scraping patients’ DOB, Medicare number and credit card details, the scammer was typically charging people $500 for the pleasure.
Pity the poor compounding pharmacist whose legitimate compounding business has a similar name when he started getting calls from the Queensland Police.
In May, Holly wrote a follow-up — No doctor, no script, no worries: here’s your Ozempic – that has been, by a country mile, our most clicked-on story of the year.
Ezyscripts offered to pay GPs $25 per script to send patients its way, with a website that turned out to be Script Warehouse – and that led to a $199 a month Ozempic deal that didn’t involve a prescription – or in the end, any Ozempic.
All of which is a pity, given the amazing performance of the GLP1-RAs in terms of diabetes treatment and weight loss.
You do love a gong
Whether it’s Australia Day, the Sovereign’s Birthday, or even the Medicare Champions awards, you clearly love hearing about GPs getting reward for effort.
Professor the Honourable Hugh Heggie PSM AO was top of the pile in January, honoured for 20 years of rural generalism, a stint as the Northern Territory’s CHO, and now, as the Territory’s Administrator.
Dr Janice Bell AM, Dr Beres Wenck (Woodhead) AM, and Professor Katina D’Onise AM were the top honorees in June.
And five GPs — Dr Lorraine Anderson, Dr Miranda Hann, Dr Dong Hua, Dr Lester Mascarenhas and Dr Andrew Palfreman – were among the nine individual Medicare Champions named in November.
Valuing GPs
Regular columnist Associate Professor Louise Stone nailed it early in her February article, What’s a GP worth? Let’s crunch the numbers.
Louise did the maths. A standard GP year costs the community ~$571,000 per year, and includes all the infrastructure a GP needs, including their building and staff. A standard mental health GP year costs the community around $250,000 per year.
She then compared various federal government initiatives, their costs versus GP standard years. For example, the pharmacy vaccination program cost $114 million or 200 standard GP years.
You get the picture.
She then described a patient of hers, misdiagnosed by a UCC, unsuitable for PHN programs, not suited to headspace, rejected by public psychiatry because of substance abuse, rejected by AOD services because his problem is psychiatric.
“So he sees me. Just me. For $80. I have spent countless fruitless hours trying to get him into any other service. Do not tell me a multidisciplinary team would provide better care. They are not the experts in the patients they refuse to see.”
Scope of practice
Oh lord, it’s been a year.
Pharmacists want to prescribe, they want to treat, they want to be called Doctor.
Nurses want to do more, and midwives want to do what they do without collaborative arrangements.
Physiotherapists want to refer directly to orthopaedic surgeons without reference to the patient’s GP.
And so far it looks like they are all getting their way. Why? Squeaky wheels, perhaps.
But my theory is that politicians think giving them what they want is a cheaper option than funding general practice properly.
Colour me weird.
Payroll tax, and now, GST
I swear, and I’m pretty sure Holly and TMR’s other terrific reporter Laura Woodrow will back me up here, if I never have to read about, write about or try and understand payroll tax ever again, it will be too soon.
Nevertheless, this issue, and the one coming up behind it, GST, are super-important and super-neglected by medical education institutions, colleges and lobby groups alike.
The truth is out there, people. And David Dahm and Jeremy Knibbs just might know it.
Our top stories
Here are our top 10 stories for 2024:
And because there are many ways to count a click, here are the ones that had an impact in the month they were published:
Related
Thankyous
We love bringing you TMR. Those of you who were at our Burning GP event back in June will have heard me say that part of our mission is to help you make the system better.
That’s something we take very seriously, but we have fun doing it and we hope that fun shows through in our work, at least some of the time.
My thanks to Holly and Laura who are dogged on the trail of a story, and know the ups and downs of GP Land better than I ever could.
My thanks too to our regular columnists who give a much-needed insider’s view to all the issues of the day, each with their own voice and perspective – Louise Stone, Dr Imaan Joshi, Dr Pallavi Prathivadi, Dr Ceri Ceshell, the mysterious and hilarious Professor Candid (Humoural Theory), David Dahm, and of course, our very own publisher Jeremy Knibbs, whose knack for poking the bear is unparalleled.
But most of all, thanks to you, our readers, for engaging, reading, arguing, agreeing and disagreeing with us all year long. We couldn’t do it without you.
This is the last First Draft newsletter of the year. We have three more daily newsletters before we stop for our annual break.
Don’t worry, we won’t be neglecting you entirely! There will be three summer reading newsletters over the coming weeks and the first daily newsletter of the year will hit your inboxes on Monday 13 January.
Until then, have a relaxing and joyful break when it comes to you. And we will see you in 2025!
