AGPN sets new course

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AGPN sets new course for membership


Byron Kaye
  
9th Nov 2012
from MEDICAL OBSERVER www.medicalobserver.com.au

Dr Pearce said he was staying on the AGPN board to ensure general practice remained strong during the ML reforms.
THE AGPN will charge membership fees to discourage Medicare Locals from being members and will make a claim to remain part of United General Practice Australia, the GP who plans to resurrect the shelved divisions body said yesterday.
Victorian GP Dr Nick Demediuk was the only person to nominate for the board of AGPN at a small annual general meeting held on the sidelines of AML Alliance’s conference in Adelaide yesterday – he was instantly elected.
He said he hoped to turn AGPN into a national body for liaison and representation of general practice issues.
“We will bring in a membership fee of sorts,” he told MO. “Part of bringing in a membership fee will be to sort out the membership.
“If we bring in some sort of membership fee, some MLs will say ‘this is not our core business’ and they might actually drop out and leave a cleaner membership base for us to work with.”
He said that would include the ML of which he is chair. He is also on a division board but will step down.
Dr Demediuk said he envisaged returning AGPN to a major representative body which would sit alongside the AMA, the RACGP and AML Alliance “at the table of United General Practice”.
Dr Demediuk joins South Australian GP Dr Rod Pearce, already a director, on the AGPN board while two more directors who planned to leave, Dr Karen Stringer and Dr Tony Lembke, will stay to help the company get its board closer to its minimum of five. Dr Demediuk indicated he would try to change the organisation’s constitution to have the minimum reduced.
Dr Pearce said he was staying on the AGPN board to ensure general practice remained strong during the ML reforms.
AGPN has been a corporate shell since June when its general practice-centric business and funding streams moved to the broader primary health focused AML Alliance and its board failed in an attempt to get member backing to wind up.
Yesterday's meeting was the last for AGPN chair Dr Emil Djakic, whose term expired.