Group founder Dr April Armstrong says it will ‘focus relentlessly on a small number of principles’.
Two prominent GPs have launched a new, independent advocacy group with the aim of becoming the “single organisation consistently asking whether reforms improve patient outcomes, preserve accountability, maintain continuity of care and are supported by evidence”.
The doctors behind The Medical Guild of Australia, which has taken the form of a private Facebook group, are Business For Doctors founder Dr April Armstrong and previous Rural Doctors Association of Australia president Dr Sue Page.
It’s open to any doctor working in private practice.
Dr Armstrong told The Medical Republic that the group was not created because existing organisations like the AMA and RACGP have failed.
“The colleges exist to train, educate and set standards for their specialties,” she said.
“Their primary responsibility is education, accreditation and professional development.
“The AMA is a broad representative body covering doctors across public hospitals, private practice, training, academia and administration. It must represent a diverse range of interests and understandably focuses on a wide range of national health issues.
“The Medical Guild is being created to focus on a narrower but increasingly important space: protecting patient safety, clinical independence, continuity of care, evidence-based healthcare and the sustainability of independent medical practice.”
The name itself appears to be an allusion to the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, the politically powerful lobby group representing the owners of community pharmacies.
One key difference is that the pharmacy guild is a registered national employers’ organisation, making it the official voice of community pharmacy owners.
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The pharmacy guild’s level of access to power may be storied, but it also demands a high fee from members – $2860 per year, to be exact. This is more than RACGP, ACRRM or the AMA already demand.
“Ultimately, the [medical] Guild will only succeed if it earns influence through evidence, professionalism and constructive advocacy,” Dr Armstrong said.
“It won’t succeed because of a constitution, a logo or a launch event. It will succeed if governments, regulators and the public come to see it as a trusted voice asking sensible questions and proposing practical solutions.
“The question isn’t whether a Guild can do what others could not. The question is whether there is room for an organisation focused on issues that many clinicians feel are not being consistently addressed today.”
The advocacy issues that the newly-formed group will focus on include patient safety, continuity of care, evidence-based clinical decisions, transparent policy and independent practice.
The Medical Guild of Australia is entering a crowded field.
Australia already has multiple non-college groups which represent the interests of general practice. Melbourne GP Dr Chris Irwin founded the Australian Society of General Practice in 2021.
ASGP even applied for union status, but was blocked because its membership included both practice owners and contractor GPs. It has now been inactive for some time.
Technically, the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation also already represents GPs under certain circumstances – registrars, for instance, are nearly always a practice employee.
General practice also already has an official organisation representing the interests of practice owners – the Australian GP Alliance.
Then there’s the Primary Care Business Council, which represents the owners of 10 major corporate GP chains, including ForHealth, Ochre Health and Sonic. While mostly dormant, it occasionally activates around elections and federal budget season.
The Rural Doctors Association of Australia, alongside its various sub-branches across the states and territories, also advocates for the interests of rural generalists and GPs.
