Déjà vu?
Remember Virtual Medical Centres, started by Perth oncologist Dr Andrew Dean? By employing medical students and a science editor they were able to scan the literature and generate high quality articles across different disciplines for a website largely free of ads. Having built a following of health consumers, VMC investors found sponsorship from BigPond (now Telstra Media), happy to reach the health consumers that VMC brought them through website integration. VMC has since changed back to low-advert information for consumers and different information for health professionals who can register under the new national scheme to receive promotions from pharmaceutical companies and suchlike. Telstra more recently invested in HealthEngine under Perth CEO Dr Marcus Tan, which has joined with Yahoo!7 Lifestyle to bring advertisers and health consumers closer together. According to a report in Pulse+IT, the online health directory and appointment booking service, which Dr Tan reportedly said lists as many allied health and dental practices as GPs, will be integrated into the Yahoo!7 Lifestyle website.
Docs health: Board cares
The Medical Board of Australia will spend $2 million to standardise doctors’ health programs across the country. Services include advice and referral, education and awareness, general advocacy and the development of case management services. The model is based on the Victorian scheme, which has apparently gone down well with doctors there. Funding will come from the Board’s existing resources and Board head Dr Joanna Flynn said the program would complement the regulatory focus of the Board and AHPRA. It would be calling on “stakeholders like the AMA and BeyondBlue to make them happen.” Coordinator of the WA Doctors Health Advisory Service (DHAS) Dr David Oldham said the service had been represented at planning meetings but nothing had been put in place for WA. DHAS and AMA WA would be holding a meeting to hear what local doctors want. In the meantime the LOCAL 24-hour helpline will operate as usual. Regarding the ‘regulatory focus’ David said the systems in Victoria and South Australia both had agreements with the Board that if a doctor was complying with treatment there would be no need to inform the board. He added that WA law is different excluded mandatory reporting.
Hospital building spree
Hospitals are going up in every direction. Latest in the building stakes is Hollywood Private Hospital which is sinking $74.1 million on an expansion to building a new wing with six theatres, two 30-bed wards and a new kitchen all anticipated to be completed by late 2015. In addition to that are 30 new beds for the existing 40-bed inpatient mental health unit, The Hollywood Clinic. It’s expected to open this month.
New Dean at Notre Dame
The doctors of the future will be taught continuous learning skills to help them face the challenges of a hi-tech, fast-changing society, but communication between doctor and patient is still the most important skill. These are a couple of first impressions from the new dean of the Notre Dame Medical School, Prof Shirley Bowen, who had only been in the chair a week when Medical Forum caught up with her. Shirley brings a wealth of clinical experience with her as former director of medical services at SJG Murdoch. Before that she was an infectious diseases physician at Fremantle Hospital. Shirley like her predecessor Prof Gavin Frost (both pictured) has no statement to make on the Curtin proposal for a third medical school but did say that if we graduated more doctors the issue of post-graduate training needed to be debated. She said graduated doctors needed to know they could be trained beyond their degree.
Kids’ Pain Clinic opens
Medical Forum explored the issue of children’s pain in last August’s edition and the apparent need for a dedicated pain clinic at PMH. In an e-Poll at the time, more than half of those surveyed had no qualms about such a unit. We reported that funding was going to be allocated and now it’s official, there is a regular fortnightly clinic. There is still some recruitment for the multidisciplinary team, [comprising doctors, physiotherapists, OTs and clinical psychologists, led by a paediatric pain specialist] but there’s a lot of relief that the doors are open, particularly from parents who have lobbied hard for years for such a clinic.
Indigenous depression tool
For those working in Aboriginal health, the WA Centre for Health & Ageing has developed a culturally appropriate screening tool to help diagnose depression in older Indigenous people, particularly living in remote areas. Prof Leon Flicker said the tool was a modification of the commonly used depression risk assessment tool Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). It has passed the trial of a cross-sectional survey of adults aged 45 years or over from six remote Indigenous communities in the Kimberley [30% from Derby]. It’s called the Kimberley Indigenous Cognitive Assessment of Depression (KICA-dep) and is free to download from www.wacha.org.au