AMCU Community Media

10/10/2026

Here come “ The Big Ban ! 💣💥💥💥”

09/10/2026

Australia’s Healthcare System Is Going Backwards — When Even an Urgent Referral Means Waiting Indefinitely

What is the point of categorising a patient as URGENT if the healthcare system cannot provide an appointment?

As a GP, I am increasingly concerned about the deteriorating accessibility of specialist care in Australia’s public healthcare system.

Consider a patient diagnosed with a complex ovarian cyst, requiring urgent specialist assessment to exclude a possible malignancy.

The referral was sent to a public hospital.

The hospital itself reviewed the referral and categorised it as URGENT.

Yet the patient was simply placed on a waiting list.

Three months have already passed. No appointment. Not even a phone call offering an appointment.

And there is still no indication of when she will be seen. We have contacted them a number of times.

Now imagine that the cyst turns out to be ovarian cancer.

What if, during these months of waiting, the cancer progresses from a potentially treatable condition to advanced disease?

What if the opportunity for early treatment is lost?

What if this delay ultimately costs her life?

Not every complex ovarian cyst is cancer. But that is precisely why urgent assessment is necessary — to establish a diagnosis before potentially irreversible harm occurs.

In Victoria, the public hospital system’s benchmark for an urgent specialist outpatient appointment is generally within 30 days.

Yet this patient has already waited three months without even receiving an appointment date.

If an urgent patient cannot be seen within a clinically appropriate timeframe, what does the word “urgent” actually mean?

We hear repeated announcements about healthcare funding, record investments and improvements to public services.

But healthcare should not be measured merely by how much money governments spend.

It should be measured by whether patients can access the care they need, when they need it.

Those who can afford private healthcare may be able to secure earlier assessment. Those who cannot are left waiting, worrying and hoping their condition does not deteriorate.

Are we allowing timely healthcare to become a privilege rather than a fundamental part of universal healthcare?

We need genuine accountability, transparent outpatient waiting times, adequate specialist capacity and effective escalation pathways for patients whose urgent referrals remain unresolved.

A referral marked URGENT should trigger timely clinical action, not simply a place on an indefinite waiting list.

Three months. No appointment. No call. No certainty.

This is not what Australians should expect from a modern healthcare system.

When the healthcare system fails to act in time, the price is not always measured in dollars. Sometimes, it is measured in lives.

A Concerned Australian GP

09/10/2026

The Victorian Government is extending a fundamentally flawed program to more conditions, despite serious concerns about patient safety, fragmented care, and conflicts of interest. AMA Victoria remains firmly opposed to pharmacist prescribing in retail pharmacies.

The conflict of interest is inherent in the model: the same business deciding whether a patient needs medication also profits from supplying it. Each expansion places more medical decisions in that setting and risks further fragmenting patients’ care.

Common reflux medications, including some proton pump inhibitors, are already available over the counter, so we question why this expansion is required. Further to this, the use of PPI medications needs monitoring as prolonged us , in itself, can cause significant side effects. Ongoing monitoring and decisions about further investigations should sit with a doctor; risks of significant reflux oesophagitis and gastric cancers need be to be understood and require an ongoing , patient-focussed holistic approach to care, not fractured, episodic treatments.

Menopausal hormone therapy is likewise not a simple tick and flick process. It requires treatment tailored to the individual and regular medical reviews to monitor side effects, reassess risks, and adjust medication as needed. Even a one month resupply requires a decision about whether treatment remains safe and appropriate. To suggest a community pharmacy is a suitable setting for that medical assessment is misguided. Womens' healthcare requires a long-term therapeutic relationship and should not be fractured or commercialised. The health outcomes are significant, the screening is vital and the failure to recognise the risks involved in this approach by government is gravely concerning.

The Government should reverse this expansion, abolish Chemist Care Now, and strengthen access to GP-led care.

Before dispensing medication, pharmacists must undertake a thorough consultation in a private room and outline any risks.

02/10/2026

If households must hold back, so should government.

Households are cutting back under higher interest rates to bring inflation down. It makes little sense for fiscal policy to keep adding demand while monetary policy tries to restrain it.

Restraint has been tried before, often in the wrong places. The Medicare rebate freeze, begun under Labor and extended under the Coalition, squeezed an essential frontline service while broader spending kept growing.

That's not the answer. Cutting Medicare, pensions or essential services isn't either.

The focus should be on new discretionary spending, programs that no longer deliver value, and politically popular commitments that cost a lot but deliver little public benefit.

Protect essential services.
Maintenance before expansion.
Efficiency before new spending.
Outcomes before announcements.

Government can't control global energy shocks. It can control its own spending.

If households are expected to show restraint, government should too.

01/10/2026

Support our doctors 🥼

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1C42HnCb7J/?mibextid=wwXIfr

29/09/2026

Heart of Care, Season 3, Chapter 3 - What Blindness Permits

email to [email protected] (https://www.buzzsprout.com/2500794...

16/09/2026

If net migration is cut to zero or massively,

Will the productivity increase in Australia as a Nation?

14/09/2026

https://youtu.be/l2KfLmO-TXc?si=LIoOqpJ-PkJTguMT

email to [email protected] (https://www.buzzsprout.com/2500794...

01/08/2026

🎙️ Heart of Care, Season 3

Chapter 1 - God Is Dead And we have killed him

This season, we present something different.

Not just conversations.
Not just commentary.

But a story.

A voice carried across borders, memory, fear, hope, and survival.

This is The Light That Refuses to Stay Out — the audiobook adaptation of the book by Evan Hope.

A deeply personal reflection on Myanmar, dictatorship, migration, medicine, conscience, and the quiet struggle to remain human in a world that often rewards silence.

Chapter by chapter, month by month, we will share this journey through Heart of Care.

Not because the story is comfortable.

But because some stories should not disappear quietly into darkness.

If even one part of this resonates with you, please share it with others.

Because sometimes the most powerful thing we can do… is refuse to look away.

🎧 Presented by AMCU Media
🎙️ Heart of Care Podcast

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nhXFVGzmoPzXQsOVzl8Oz?si=a7c7e5a2ea4f4ebc

Heart of Care · Episode

31/05/2026

Prayer of the Survivor