The doctor shortage.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

SIR: Recent events at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital and their repercussions demonstrate how the Coalition's Health Manpower ("Workforce") chickens have come home to roost. It was under John Howard's leadership in 1996 that Michael Wooldridge accepted patently unreliable figures from the Australian Medical Workforce Advisory Committee and reduced our medical workforce.

Lest any reader think that my comment is made with hindsight, I refer them to my article thirty years ago, in this very journal (1977, Vol. XXI, no. 4, pp. 8-9). I drew attention then to the obviously worsening shortage of doctors and have continued doing so over the ensuing decades. AMWAC ignored the evidence from the medical employment marketplace. They were swayed by rising health care costs and international comparisons and stupidly thought that cutting supply would reduce demand.

I quote from Wooldridge's apparently forgotten address to the Australian Medical Association's National Conference in May 1996:

 
   We have recently had, though, a 
   new report from the Australian 
   Medical Workforce Advisory 
   Committee (AMWAC)--"Australian 
   Medical Workforce 
   Benchmarks". ...