Careful with this "old" bit :-) I concede some of us are more "mature" than others..
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Greg Twyford Sent: Tuesday, 21 February 2006 10:50 AM To: General Practice Computing Group Talk Subject: Re: [GPCG_TALK] Healthy WSDLs? David Guest wrote: > The obvious group to benefit from something like this would be Primary. > You could walk into any Primary store and the docs would have full > access to your medical record. It would even give Bateman an opportunity > to enter the specialist market since there would be advantages in > vertical integration. David, He is already in the specialist market. Our local Primary medical centre has 15 or so GPs and specialists, dentists, CT scanner, X-Ray, you name it. It is also surrounded by smaller practices that mostly seem to be doing fine. The big medical centre will only soak up part of the market because they only scale to larger commercial centres. Lots of smaller GPs exist everywhere else. There isn't the monetary advantage in an area like ours where nearly everyone bulk-bills anyway. So its not really like Coles versus the local corner store. We are the home of small practices. Our cultural diversity helps too, I'm sure. > I don't see it happening as it would entail them > writing off their $100 million investment in HCN. Why? they are still using Medtech32 at all their centres, as far as I know. I've been waiting for the pundits to poke fun at them and ask why they aren't backing their own product. > If somebody else could make this work, it would be the death knell of > city solo and small group practice, but I guess that rang a while ago. David, you need to come to Southern Sydney sometime and I'll take you around many solo practices. They exist right across this part of Sydney where bulk-billing still rules, unlike most of the the rest of the country. Before the $5 for under 16s and pensioners came in our bulk-bill rate had dropped to about 95%, but I'm sure it's higher now. Like the bush, our problem is ageing GPs, and I don't know what the answer to that one will be. I think it's the real 'sleeper' issue. They are mostly old, but no-one is telling us they are planning to retire any time soon. Greg -- Greg Twyford Information Management & Technology Program Officer Canterbury Division of General Practice E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph.: 02 9787 9033 Fax: 02 9787 9200 PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL *********************************************************************** The information contained in this e-mail and their attached files, including replies and forwarded copies, are confidential and intended solely for the addressee(s) and may be legally privileged or prohibited from disclosure and unauthorised use. If you are not the intended recipient, any form of reproduction, dissemination, copying, disclosure, modification, distribution and/or publication or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance upon this message or its attachments is prohibited. All liability for viruses is excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law. *********************************************************************** _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
