News

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New Chair for RACGP Funding and Health System Reform

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The new chairs of the RACGP Expert Committees (RECs) have now been revealed, and although most have continued their tenure in these key positions, there has been a change of guard in Funding and Health System Reform.
 
The committee’s incoming Chair, Associate Professor Rashmi Sharma, is a Canberra-based GP with an impressive resume.
 
She is Clinical Associate Professor at the Australian National University’s Medical School, a practice owner, member of a long list of health organisations and boards, and in 2015, she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to medicine.
 
Associate Professor Sharma has been a member of the REC for some time already and shared with newsGP her motivations for stepping into the top job.
 
‘I feel this is a really pivotal moment for the profession, and so I wanted to just continue the work that I have done in the past,’ she said.
 
‘There is a lot of health system reform occurring at the moment and we’ve really got to make sure that we don’t lose all the hard work that we have done to date, and also make sure that general practice is well positioned to move forward in the future.’
 
Associate Professor Sharma is taking over the leadership from Dr Michael Wright, who has been the Chair since 2018 and recently stepped up to the RACGP President role at the GP24 conference.
 
Following voting from eligible members earlier this year, the five REC Chairs are now:

• Quality Care – Professor Mark Morgan 
• Research – Professor Dimity Pond 
• Standards for General Practice – Dr Louise Acland 
• Practice Technology and Management – Dr Robert Hosking 
• Funding and Health Systems Reform – Associate Professor Rashmi Sharma 

As general practice is the ‘linchpin of primary care’, Associate Professor Sharma said it is within the scope of these committees to ensure ‘the community and the Government understands our benefits’.
 
‘We need to make sure that as a profession, we feel valued, and we need to make sure that we have a sustainable health system, and we know that general practice is the solution to that,’ she said.
 
‘That’s why I feel it’s important that we keep up the advocacy and the work in this area, because this is the foundation for the health system moving forward.’
 
The RECs allow GPs to contribute their own expertise in specific areas, which will go on to guide the development of RACGP position statements, submissions, guidelines, resources, and tools for GPs.
 
Associate Professor Sharma said she will be aiming for the committee to maintain balance within the often-disjointed influences of reform and funding.
 
 ‘There are multiple reviews looking at every aspect of general practice, often not joined up together, often with external influences, often with political agendas as well,’ she said.
 
‘We need to try and navigate that so that we make sure that the Australian population will have high quality primary care going into the future, where general practice is really the central component of being able to care for our ageing population, who are going to have more and more chronic disease issues.’
 
And although the committee has contributed meaningfully to this space so far, Associate Professor Sharma said she wants to start looking further forward.
 
‘We’ve worked very hard over the last couple of years with a wonderful team and had to respond to a lot of policy ideas and other areas of potential reform, and I think we’ve done that to the best of our abilities, and we’ve done that well,’ she said.
 
‘But I think it would be really nice as well to now come forward and spend a bit more time on those proactive activities that can actually place us as a profession well into the future.
 
‘Things that may be beyond my tenure but setting up the goals now and taking those steps forward to actually allow the next generation to enjoy healthcare with a robust general practice.’
 
Associate Professor Sharma said she is looking forward to the challenge.
 
‘We need to have a plan, we need to have a vision, and we need to take steps to actually make them happen, and also taking the general practice membership along with us as well as the community, politicians and the policy makers,’ she said.
 
‘It’s a hard gig, but I think it’s something that’s definitely worth trying to do.’
 
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advocacy funding and health system reform RACGP advocacy RACGP Expert Committee

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