TASMANIA'S overloaded general practitioners have been left out of the health reform debate by their representative organisations, an outspoken doctor claims.
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Claremont GP Graeme Alexander has given evidence to Senate inquiries into the health workforce and Medicare as well as Legislative Council committee hearings into Tasmania's public hospitals.
In 2004, he appeared on a national current affairs program with former prime minister John Howard alleging politicians had failed to see the doctor shortage crisis in general practice.
Yesterday, Dr Alexander slammed the groups meant to represent and support his profession.
He said the Australian Medical Association had become a government bedfellow and that GP North and GP Workforce were impotent in their efforts to support doctors.
GP North and GP Workforce are federally funded.
"They have let us down inch by inch," Dr Alexander said.
"Andrew Pesce (AMA national president) has made no mention that general practice is on its knees - I want people to ask how will the new health system work when general practice collapses," Dr Alexander said.
A spokesman for the Tasmanian branch of the AMA denied the claims.
He said the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's plan was for hospital and health reform, not GP reform, and that the AMA had strongly advocated for more doctors and more beds and had not just agreed with the reform agenda, as Dr Alexander claimed.
GP North did not respond to Dr Alexander's claims.
On Sunday, an AMA spokesman and Launceston GP Don Rose and GP Workforce chief Peter Barns claimed patients were waiting up to a month for an ordinary consultation with a general practitioner and urged action to recruit GPs into urban Tasmania.
They said Launceston and Hobart were 25 GPs short.
