Let's have more equity and justice in rural health services provision

Abstract

As we are all well aware there have been great changes in health care delivery over the past two decades. The scientific advances that have made all of this possible command headlines in our national newspapers almost daily. So too has been the rate of change in the publication Australian Health Review. I want to offer my warm congratulations to the Editorial Committee who, over the years, have brought AHR to the stage it is at today ? a quality professional journal. While so much that is great has happened in our hospitals over the last quarter of a century we need to be honest and admit not everything has been optimal. And we must be honest, too, in admitting there have been some quite remarkable ?power plays? within some of our finest health facilities and bureaucracies. Patients losing out to politics has so often been the result of these unpraiseworthy antics. Does it have to stay this way? Or can we move on to a better way of behaving and distributing scarce resources? Many years of my professional life were spent within busy teaching hospitals where we did our part in consuming the lion?s share of the scarce resources. The last five years in consulting practice have seen me working a substantial amount of my time in rural Australia. This has been a very rewarding personal, as well as professional, experience for me. It has also been an eyeopening one ? my city-blinkered view has been challenged in a variety of ways.