Representatives for the Greater Western Area Health Service met with NSW Premier Kristina Keneally, Health Minister Carmel Tebbutt and other senior NSW clinicians in Sydney yesterday to discuss the takeover model ahead of a Council of Australian Governments meeting next month.

Greater Western Area Health Advisory Council chair Dr Steve Flecknoe-Brown, who attended the meeting, said the detail in the government’s current proposal needed to be fleshed out if the states were to get on board.

“I think we were all there to fine tune the [State] government’s response to a worthy attempt at reform, but we just want more detail,” he said.

“For instance, we don’t know what hospital networks mean.”

Dr Flecknoe-Brown said information that was lacking included the implications the proposal would have for the health workforce, primary care and educational research.

He said clinicians were also waiting on the government’s yet-to-be-released taxation review.

Dr Flecknoe-Brown said the impact of the proposed casemix funding model was still the greatest concern for rural communities.

“As a general principle [Medicare architect] John Deeble described it as a sausage machine with the hospitals producing the most sausages getting the most money and that’s not a good way to fund health,” he said.

“There’s no way you can compare rural hospitals to larger metropolitan ones and it’s concerning that the prime minister and health minister seem to have been caught flat footed by that.”

Orange Base Hospital Medical Staff Council chair Dr Ruth Arnold said the government needed to iron out the rural funding issue before it proceeded with its reforms.

“If they work out down the track that this funding model for rural and regional hospitals won’t work, it’s going to be a disaster,” she said.

lisa.cox@ruralpress.com