I believe that the community needs answers to the following questions:

Do the doctors want to move, or are they being forced to?

What is going to happen to the centre when the medical area moves?

How is one courtesy car being provided from the Phillip super centre going to help all the patients from the Wanniassa practice?

How is this super clinic going to handle the continuity of the patient's health, if you cannot make appointments with your own doctor?

How many hours will patients have to wait at the super clinic before they see the doctor on duty for that day?

We cannot dictate the rules of sale of this site, but the owner could have shown more consideration to the patients. Now is the time for the ACT Government to come to the rescue of the patients, before the election.

First we had super schools which led to school closures. We now have super medical centres what next? Could it be after the election we have a super government?

Rosemary Lissimore, President, Tuggeranong Community Council

Thinus van Rensberg (Letters, August 2) suggests that the move by his medical colleagues to a corporate medical practice is motivated by financial need, not greed. I remain unconvinced, and I contest his view of what he regards as a salary appropriate to qualifications.

He quotes between $61 and $150 an hour, for four 15-minute consultations per hour, depending upon where you were trained and how long individual consultations are. This is what Medicare rebates to the practice that bulk-bills.

In another context, he mentions long working hours. That says volumes for dedication, but longer hours do mean increased income. He intimates that doctors earning less than their administrative staff is commonplace, and that some clinics run at a loss every year. I do not believe this.

How does he define loss, and who absorbs it? Van Rensberg's penultimate paragraph asks someone to show him any other profession where someone with 10 or more years of tertiary education has to work for less than $50 per hour. I can, although it is a moot point since more than 99 per cent of medical practitioners do not have such an education. The average is about seven years, and only a minority have a medical doctorate MD or its equivalent. This is not to denigrate the MB and BS qualifications, or their equivalent. The average Australian medical practitioner receives $160,000 a year. Yet an entry-level university lecturer earns only about $60,000 a year, usually after seven years of university education, including a PhD plus a year or more of post-doctoral university experience overseas.

Professor Greg Jackson, Kambah

I was most disturbed about the ''amalgamation'' of the Wanniassa Medical Centre with the existing clinic in Colbee Court, Phillip (''Clinic move pains patients'', August 1, p1).

It was stated that this would provide a better service. My question is for whom? These days, the fashionable medical jargon is all about ''patient-centred care''.

I cannot see that moving a medical centre, which caters for a wide range of people in a local area with nearby shops and with reasonably good public transport, to a location in a busy centre without adequate public transport and parking problems on many days is at all ''patient centred''.

It seems to me that this is a very stupid decision made probably on economic grounds by some business people or bureaucracy without any thought to patient access.

Furthermore, it is essential for people with severe disabilities to have continuity of care from one GP who is across all of the patient's history and ''manages'' the patient's access to the many and varied services needed.

It is extremely stressful for people such as myself to constantly have to repeat a long medical history to different doctors!

Another puzzling factor about the proposed move is that the Wanniassa Medical Centre has recently undergone extensive (and I suspect expensive) alterations, uses nurse practitioners and has other services available on site.

Why do all this work if the Wanniassa site is not viable? It would interest me immensely to know the full story behind this move. I am outraged at the inconvenience this move is causing a lot of vulnerable people!

I also understand that the move is to take place within a fortnight hardly enough time for patients to sort out whether they are going to struggle to Phillip or try and visit a closer GP, and certainly not enough time to contact elderly and disabled people to ensure their needs are being met.

But then, who gives a damn these days, about the patients or customers everything is ''for economic reasons''.

Dianne Proctor, Wanniassa