What we, the people, are wanting are ordinary email addresses that are readily available which we can use to ask questions about matters that are of concern to us, and that when we do this, we get a prompt reply acknowledging receipt of our email, and that in due course, (most enquiries are not super urgent,) we get a helpful response.
If ever we get to having a world like this, it will be heaven.
The technology for this to happen is in place – in fact it’s kindergarten stuff. But the problem is that for this to happen there has to be one or more people of reasonably high intelligence with a reasonable amount of training whose job it is to provide answers, and that involves money.
And so we get the spectacle of every trick in the book being used to discourage people from asking questions – no more so than with government organisations, of which the Australian Health Practioner Regulation Agency, (AHPRA,) is typical.
To ask AHPRA a question:-
(1) There’s no ordinary email address, you have to use an email form. And using this form to ask questions requires that you provide all sorts of information that has nothing to do with your question, or any answer that may be provided – like your date of birth and your phone number.
(2) With lots of organisations you get an immediate response, automated, acknowledging receipt of your email form, but you never get anything that puts you in the position where you have proof that you asked any particular question – with AHPRA you don’t even get that.
(3) When you get a response, it comes via an ordinary email address, which is how it has to be, but when you get a response that’s so dumb, isn’t an answer to your question at all, (as happened to one of our readers recently,) or if, for any other reason, you want to ask a further question, you are specifically told that you can’t use this ordinary email address, you have to use the email form again, and provide all the same details again.
What AHPRA is really saying, and in turn the Federal Government is really saying is, “We don’t want to spend the money required to have enough reasonably intelligent reasonably trained people to answer all the questions people could ask, so we are using any tricks we can think of to discourage people from asking questions.”
To us, this means that the hunt is on for people and organisations who have enough reasonably intelligent reasonably trained people to answer all the questions we would like to ask.
For your comments and answers to any questions we may be able to provide, and to provide us with any relevant information you may have, email us at mail@medicalquestionsandanswers.net