October 2015

 

Licence to thrillelderly-woman-driving-thumbs-up200
We had a medical student write to us amazed at the amount of GPs’ time that was soaked up by patients, usually elderly, worrying about their drivers’ licence. She thought it was being enforced by government and was concerned it was turning patients off from telling their doctor about symptoms for fear it might impact on their licence eligibility. We asked the Department of Transport if it was now mandatory for doctors to report if they thought their patients’ were no longer fit to drive. DoT’s response was: “There is no legal requirement on WA doctors to report unfit drivers… however discussing the matter sensitively with patients will help achieve better road safety outcomes…A licence holder is entitled to continue to drive as long as they hold a valid driver’s licence and meet the national standards for assessing fitness to drive…Doctors have protection from prosecution action for expressing, in good faith, an opinion formed as result of having carried out a test or examination in relation to a patient’s fitness to drive to DoT.”

Panorama winds up
We’ve been alerted to a General Meeting of Panorama Health Network that was to be held on September 30 to wind up the company in the wake of its failure to secure its bid for the northern suburbs Primary Health Network. Its funding ceased on June 30 on the eve of the PHNs taking control of Medicare Locals, in particularly the Perth North Medicare Local. Its chair Dr Alistair Vickery was on leave and uncontactable at the time of publishing as was its CEO Ms Terina Grace. However, we have seen the not-for-profit’s financial statements which it enclosed in a letter to doctors in the catchment. It is recommending the assets of Panorama be rolled over to Black Swan Health Ltd, a service provision company based in Joondalup that, we’re told, has a similar board and executive make-up as Panorama. The meeting was also asked to agree to the appointment of a voluntary liquidator. Black Swan’s website is short of company information but its services continue PNML’s work in the area of mental health, diabetes, aged care and chronic pain management. We weren’t able to ascertain why the need for a new identity and offices but there is a lot of unknowns in this new landscape of primary health which will be the subject of more investigation.

Support groups in hospital play
In this issue we report on the chronic conditions discussion paper, consultations and survey concluded last month (See P41). All the representative groups had their say along with 700 individuals across Australia … suspicions are that the rest of the 29,000 GPs didn’t know what had happened. Not so for the good folk at ConnectGroups. They have been working with the WA Health’s Chronic Health Conditions Network and have provided a comprehensive directory of relevant community-based support groups. That task is all but done with 235 services highlighted in the regions and 300 in the metro area. The directory is available online and in hardcopy. ConnectGroup ED Ms Antonella Segre also told us that the group had been funded to establish a pilot program where nurses in Fremantle Hospital will be resourced to give patients information about local support groups pertinent to their condition. Antonella said this was step one in a vision to allow support groups direct access to patients in hospital.