INDEPENDENT Murchison MLC Ruth Forrest has sponsored an e-petition in the Upper House on behalf of King Islanders.
The petition called for increased physiotherapy services for King Island to reduce waiting times and to ensure King Islanders get access to physiotherapy in a timely manner particularly in the areas of chronic health care, acute injuries and post-operative patients requiring regular physiotherapy.
The petition requested the Tasmanian Health Service gain an understanding of the island’s unmet needs; extend the number of days that physiotherapists are on the island to enable more appointments and consider a change to the current same day fly-in fly-out approach.
The Premier and Health Minister Jeremy Rockcliff acknowledged in his reply the unique challenges of King Islandand its remoteness.
While he pointed to the Government’s healthcare priorities, the response avoided addressing the petition’s specific King Island requests and spoke more broadly and descriptively about health and physiotherapy services across the North West.
“Recent changes to the Patient Travel Assistance Scheme aim to address these issues [access to allied health and preventive services which includes physiotherapy],” Mr Rockliff said.
The response to the petition included discussion around healthcare worker resourcing, healthcare scholarships, state budget health services funding and the release for public consultation of the Long Term Plan for Healthcare in Tasmania 2040.
Ms Forrest was disappointed in the response to the King Island resident petition.
“While the response is welcome it failed to address, or seek to resolve, the very real and current challenges faced by King Island residents in terms of timely access to locally provided physiotherapy,” she said.
“The specific request in the petition to have physiotherapists visit extended to two days, rather than a fly-in fly-out one day service means residents of King Island have very limited access, and was completely ignored by the Government response.
“To suggest a person can fly off King Island with the support of PTAS for physiotherapy services is again welcome but may be somewhat self-defeating as the trip to and from mainland Tasmania may exacerbate their injury or surgical recovery, they are seeking the physiotherapy care for.
“I appreciate the work of UTAS in commencing training of local allied health workers but this does not assure us of more physiotherapists and certainly does nothing to address the current backlog of patients needing physiotherapy on King Island.
“I was disappointed with the response overall as it completely ignored the very simple and practical solution for the short-term demand provided by the community,” Ms Forrest said.
The petitioners request and the government’s full response can be read at ruthforrest.com.au/images/Petition_KI_Physiotherapy.pdf