Northern GPS struggling
GENERAL practice has reached a crisis point in North Queensland with doctors working long hours and delaying retirement to cope with patient demand.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners is calling for an increase to general practice funding to help reduce pressure on the entire health system.
The call comes following the college’s submission to an inquiry into the provision of general practitioner and related primary health services to outer metropolitan, rural and regional Australia, which are under pressure from an unfair distribution of funding and support for medical services.
The college’s submission says that the health system is under stress dealing with the demand of the pandemic and vaccine rollout.
The industry is also struggling to recruit doctors internationally with reduced immigration exacerbating the issue.
The college believes the lack of resourcing in general practice is adding to emergency department pressures, with many regions reaching crisis point in recent months.
RACGP Queensland chairman Dr Bruce Willett said one of the issues facing the industry was not enough future doctors were opting to work in general practice.
“In the state’s north, there are widespread reports of GPS working long hours and delaying their retirement because they don’t want to let their community down,” Dr Willett said.
“The proportion of final year medical students listing general practice as their first preference speciality for future practice has fallen to 15.2 per cent, the lowest since 2012.
“For every new GP, there are 10 new non-gp specialists and this gap between the number of non-gp specialists and GP specialists widened from 119 in 2009, to 4271 in 2017.
“Australia’s medical intern program is almost exclusively hospital-based. While gaining experience in a hospital setting is important, we must do more to boost experience in general practice during medical school and prevocational years.”
RACGP rural chairman and Townsville GP Dr Michael Clements said that changes needed to be made to pay and entitlements.
“It is important to be upfront about this – GPS in training face significant financial pressures once they transition from the hospital training environment to general practice,” he said.
“It is hardly surprising we face an uphill battle in attracting more people to the profession when hospital salaries have continued to rise year on year and the Medicare freeze has left GPS behind.
“If we don’t address inadequate remuneration, we will get nowhere fast, and the longterm sustainability of general practice and patient access to care in North Queensland will suffer,” he said.
Dr Clements said the col
lege also recommended that a national body be established to protect GP entitlements.
This would help create parity for GP registrars with hospital-based registrars.