PATIENTS in Melbourne’s north wait longer for specialist medical treatment than any other region in the country.
A National Health Performance Authority (NHPA) report released on June 20 shows that 35 per cent of adults in the Northern Melbourne Medicare Local (NMML) catchment feel they waited a “longer than acceptable” period to get a specialist appointment.
The most efficient region is the Bentley-Armadale area in Western Australia, where only 16 per cent of people feel they waited too long for a medical specialist.
The report compared 61 Medicare Local catchment regions around Australia. Medicare Locals were set up by the federal government in 2011 to co-ordinate and deliver health services such as after-hours GPs, immunisation and mental health support.
The NHPA report, Australians’ experiences with access to health care in 2011-12, is a snapshot of the way people use health care services.
The NMML includes Whittlesea, Hume, Nillumbik, Banyule and Darebin. In the year studied, 80 per cent of people in the northern region saw a GP and 32 per cent saw a medical specialist.
Whittlesea Community Con-nections chief executive Jemal Ahmet said long medical waiting lists in Melbourne’s north showed the scarcity of resources.
“It just seems to us as service providers that the north is always missing out,” he said.
“[It] is consistently failed by institutions and governments.”
Mr Ahmet said there was a “cycle of disadvantage” in Melbourne’s fringe suburbs.
He said because there were higher rates of mortgage stress, unemployment, single-parent households and young families, people were focused on “struggling to survive” instead of improving their situation.
“The capacity of those people to lobby for their own needs is limited,” he said.
Whittlesea mayor Rex Griffin said the council would continue to lobby the state government to fund more facilities.
“There is still a desperate need for more respite support in our municipality,” Cr Griffin said.
NMML spokesman John Walker said overall access to GP care in the north was commendable.
“[It is] a credit to the diligent and hard-working GP workforce.”
But he said the northern region was characterised by “significant diversity”.
He said parts of the community faced challenges in accessing appropriate care.
“The work of the NMML is to focus on the gaps,” he said.
