Better frontline healthcare Julia Gillard - Shadow Minister for Health, Manager of Opposition Business in the House of Representatives and Mark Latham - Federal Labor Leader

Get PDF

Policy Statement - 16 July 2004

A Federal Labor Government will provide 10 new Medicare licences for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines in public hospitals.

The licences are a demonstration of the benefits to patients and the public health system from Labor's Working Togethe for Medicare partnership.

Our plan eases pressure on hospitals and puts patient care first.

The allocation of MRI licences to public hospitals ends the need for them to transport in-patients by ambulance to another hospital for an MRI scan.

And for out-patients, they will no longer have to access an MRI machine by travelling long distances, waiting on long queues or paying high fees to a private provider.

The Howard Government favours licensing private operators of MRI machines.

Labor believes in working with State Governments to deliver better frontline health services.

Labor's plan

Locations

A Federal Labor Government will provide Medicare licences for MRI machines in public hospitals in the following locations:

• In Victoria, the Bendigo Healthcare Group's acute campus, and in a public hospital in Melbourne's Western Health Service and Eastern Health Service.
• In NSW, at Wollongong Hospital, Concord Hospital and Gosford Hospital.
• In Queensland, at the Logan Hospital, Redcliffe Hospital and Rockhampton Hospital.
• In South Australia, at the Lyell McEwin Hospital.

Partnerships

The Commonwealth will pay for the services provided, with no out-of-pocket expenses for out-patient services, with the States to provide the equipment, facilities and staffing needs.

Private Providers

In some parts of regional Australia with existing MRI private providers, it would not be efficient to purchase a separate machine for the public hospital.

Instead, Labor would be prepared to grant a Medicare licence to the private provider and facilitate cooperative arrangements for its use by the public hospital.

Lismore and Bunbury are two communities in this situation. We call on the Howard Government to allocate an MRI licence to Lismore and Bunbury under the current licence distribution process.

Attached: Policy fact sheets - Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine annoucment (pdf format, Size - 23kb)