In the new super clinic that the South Australian Government has built at Modbury in Adelaide there is everything but a General Practitioner.
The Government defended the situation saying the $25 million Smart Road Super Clinic is not yet fully open. It has social workers and a dietician already though. SA Health Minister John Hill said construction would not be finished until next year so only a small section of the clinic was open. He said, “We’re expecting all of the remaining services to be arranged so that when the building is opened some time next year, all of the services will be available.”
According to Opposition health spokesman Duncan McFetridge it is a white elephant. “People out at Modbury and the areas out there desperately need more GPs… We’ve seen a complete failure for planning, complete failure for consultation,” he said.
Mr. Hill added that overseas recruitment had delayed employment of GPs was a decision that was taking time but that process should be completed within weeks. The center will have five GPs, physiotherapists and dentists, and is the 14th of the 59 centres planned by Labor as part of its $630 million program to help the chronically ill and keep people out of hospital.
Initially Adelaide UniCare, a medical practice manager owned by the University of Adelaide, had agreed to provide GPs for the clinic but had to pull out of the contract six weeks ago after the federal government stopped it employing two Malaysian doctors it had recruited. Adelaide UniCare chief Garry Taylor said, “I knew it was going to hit the fan because when you’ve just spent $25m on a sexy, brand new medical centre but you can’t get anybody to work there, that's not a good look.” Dr Taylor added that he had been granted commonwealth approval to employ foreign doctors in April and had gone to Malaysia to recruit two of them, but in July the Department of Health and Ageing cancelled the approval, claiming it was an “administrative error”.
The clinic has been courting controversy and local doctors have argued that it is a waste of money that will compete with six local clinics already operating within a 3km radius of the new facility.
State government-run Adelaide Health Service defends the situation saying UniCare had withdrawn from contract negotiations and that services at the clinic were always planned to be phased in. The statement from the government body said, “The first phase of the GP Plus Super Clinic project has been completed on schedule . . . but the facility has not been officially opened… The larger second stage…is on track for completion later in 2011. These GP Plus Super Clinics are more than a ‘GP service’ and have been designed to include a wide range of primary and preventative health services. The first of the primary healthcare services that have been identified for transition into the facility have moved into the completed phase one and are starting to provide services. These include the services of dieticians, chronic disease management staff and social workers. The provision of services from the Modbury GP Plus Super clinic was always planned to be phased.”
Health Minister Nicola Roxon and Prime Minister Julia Gillard toured the site of a new GP super clinic in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane. Ms Roxon said, “The South Australian government is contracted to operate the Modbury GP Super Clinic… I fully expect the South Australian government will have GP services at Modbury when the clinic is fully operational.”
The Australian Medical Association vice-president Steve Hambleton said the government “can’t call it a GP super clinic when its got no GP - that's misleading the public.”