The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has called for the creation of a new accreditation outcome to ensure residents have ongoing access to medical care.

It says a shortage of GPs and registered nurses is putting older people in aged care homes at risk.

The chair of the association’s Healthy Ageing Committee Dr Peter Ford said facilities need a stronger regulatory incentive and increased funding to attract more GPs.

“There are 44 accreditation criteria but they don’t address two very important areas,” he said. “One is access to medical resources and the second is the ratio of registered nurses to residents.

“Because they are not in the standards, there is no impetus for facilities to address these issues. Some of them will but the intransigent ones won’t.”

Doctors are concerned that the reimbursements they receive for nursing home visits are not viable.

“If a doctor gets called to a facility outside of their routine visiting program it will take at least an hour from their day and the remuneration is in the area of $33 plus $40 for travelling time,’ said Dr Ford.

“That’s a total of $76 but the doctor’s empty chair alone is costing at least $100 an hour.”

Other issues that deter doctors from attending aged care facilities include a shortage of adequately equipped treatment rooms and computerised care systems.

And according to Dr Fleming the problem is only going to get worse as older GPs, who provide the bulk of aged care consultations, begin to retire.

“Younger doctors will not attend aged care facilities,” he said.

“We are seeing a considerable expansion of corporatised medical practrices and the corporate sector has declined to participate in aged care because it’s not financially viable.

“We now have only remnants of the older medical workforce who are willing to visit aged care facilities.”

Dr Ford is calling for an increase in funding for aged care facilities along with a better reimbursement system for visiting doctors.
 
This would include provisions that would allow GPs to claim for time spent providing information to facilities over the phone.

Dr Ford estimates that only half of the aged care consulting work conducted by his practice in Adelaide is done on site.
“Our phone is ringing ever hour with calls from facilities about situations that have arisen,” he said.

“We do an immense amount of ‘non-face to face’ work that we don’t bill for and it can be tremendously time consuming.”