What is QLD Health’s Long Term Game? A medical recruitment agency owner’s take on the situation #qldpol #smoqld #keepourdoctors
My family lives in Queensland, and I am concerned. I am worried that my eighty-one year old grandmother may get wheeled into a Bundaberg hospital devoid of staff, all because the government in that State has taken a radical and sudden approach to workforce management.
Part of my concern lies in my previous experience dealing with QLD Health at a departmental level.
I first had the pleasure of meeting with the QLD Health workforce department back in 2011, when I was the President of a medical recruitment industry association.
The reason for the meeting was that QLD Health had implemented a new policy on the recruitment and management of locum doctors- without any industry consultation, and what seemed like very little consideration to the legalities of what they were proposing.
The people I met with were sincere and seemed as though they had the best interests of their department at heart. I couldn’t help but think at the time, though, that our meeting was futile, and we would have a long battle on our hands.
What they were proposing was ludicrous. Without going into some pretty mundane details about workplace law, their expectation was that recruitment agencies take up the responsibilities for medical indemnity and work health and safety, on top of recruitment.
At the same time, the policy left no choice but for agencies to either ignore employer’s responsibilities in relation to workers compensation, superannuation, taxation, and other insurances or simply pay locum doctors less.
Essentially, in a cost-cutting move (disguised as a sharp policy change), QLD health was able to shift responsibility from themselves to the private sector recruiters in one swift blow.
Many of our colleagues in the industry chose to boycott QLD health, and still do to this day. Others took the less honest approach, and have not been meeting their employer obligations to the locums working for them.
Now I hear you – “boo hoo”, poor recruiters, having hard time of it. Why should you care?
Care or not, it’s an example of a systematic approach by QLD Health to both alienate the people working to make health services better, and at the same time showing a ruthless and exacting intent to take an unreasonable level of control (but not responsibility) of human resources.
To be open and honest, I am actually a fan of individual contracts when they’re done well. All of my staff have them, and I’ve worked under both award systems and under individual contracts. However, the way the contracts have been set up for medical staff in QLD is so unfairly slanted towards the employer that for the individual, it’s akin to negotiating the terms of your mortgage with the bank. I think it is possible for staff in hospitals to have individual contracts, but it would need years of considered work and a strong legislative safety net to make sure it’s done right.
I feel for the honest, hardworking medical professionals in QLD who have found themselves in a difficult situation. I respect their solidarity, and the integrity they have shown in their communication and the media.
Lately, we talk to QLD doctors every day, and for so many of them, the relationship with their employer is too far gone now to ever heal.
Some have already started to ask us to help look for other options elsewhere. On the face of it, this might sound like a great opportunity for a recruiter, but in the long term it is certainly not. Anything that creates unusual flux in a market is not sustainable, and causes problems in other ways.
It’s still a mystery to me what the long term game of the QLD Government is in this case.
Time will tell, but for now and forever, doctors of QLD – we’re with you.
Source: Beat Medical