ONLY six regional hospitals that offer emergency services in WA have a doctor working around the clock, but the Health Minister Dr Kim Hames said it would be unviable to increase this number.
Shadow Minister for Health and Member for Kwinana Roger Cook said in Parliament last month that Dr Hames admitted that out of the 85 regional hospitals, health centres and nursing posts only six had a doctor available on site 24 hours a day and these doctors also had to service a network of 15 integrated district health centres.
"These figures will alarm many Western Australians who may have thought that doctors were permanently based at a majority of our country hospitals," Mr Cook said.
"Alarmingly almost one third of patients in country Emergency Departments (ED's) are not seen by a doctor.
"In a State as rich as ours we should be able to afford to have doctors in regional areas."
Mr Cook said the Minister could not give any guarantee that patients who visited emergency departments in country areas would be seen by a doctor.
"The public has an expectation that if they present to an emergency department at any time of day they will be seen by a doctor," he said.
"The Minister said doctors in regional centres including Carnarvon, Exmouth, Meekatharra, Northam, Merredin, Derby and Kununurra only worked during business hours and were on call at night.
"WA is facing a chronic shortage of GPs and that shortage impacts most in the bush."
Mr Cook called on the Barnett Government to negotiate proactively and in good faith on the National Health Reform package.
"We want WA to receive the benefits of the health reform agenda so it's important the Barnett Government negotiates with the Federal Government for good outcomes for WA country patients," he said.
But Dr Hames said for a health system to cover a state as big as WA it was not physically possible to have a doctor on-site in any of those smaller hospitals.
"If we followed the member for Kwinana's plan, it would totally destroy country health services," Dr Hames said.
"If I suddenly tomorrow put a salaried doctor in Mukinbudin or Bencubbin, for example, or any little country town that has a small hospital, what does the member for Kwinana think would happen to the local doctor who runs a private practice there?"
Dr Hames said when his father worked as the single general practitioner in Boddington he saw patients on call for the hospital and whenever a patient presented to the hospital in Boddington, the nurse on duty at that hospital would make an assessment of the patient.
"The nurse would either treat the patients or send them home," he said.
"Our nurses are highly qualified and extremely well trained, and, frankly, I think the member is denigrating their capability."
Dr Hames said it would be a waste of resources if private doctors were to work in some regional hospitals.
"If the private doctor stayed working in that hospital providing GP services for all the patients in that region, say Boddington, the doctor sitting at the hospital would have had absolutely nothing to do for the whole day other than see two or three patients."
"If the government had suddenly funded a general practitioner to work in that practice, what do members think would have happened to my father's practice?
"He would have had no patients left, because the patients would have, alternatively, all gone to the hospital."
Dr Hames said WA had an integrated health model that worked exceptionally well and the WA Country Health Service was one of the best systems in the world.
"It sees half as many emergency department patients as in the metropolitan area, and it sees them extremely quickly, extremely efficiently, and the patients get an excellent service," he said.
