General Practice situation: phoney figures or the real world?
The response of the new Health Minister to the release of the AMA/Access Economics GP Workforce Study is as predictable as it is disappointing, Federal AMA President Dr Kerryn Phelps said.
If, as the Minister for Health and Ageing claims in her response to the AMA/Access Economics GP Workforce Study there is no overall shortage of general practitioners, just not enough in some areas, it follows that there must be more than enough in other areas. Where are they?
The Minister has made the mistake of assuming that all registered doctors are working full-time in general practice.
Trying to support the "there is no problem" argument by quoting increases in the number of doctors, the Minister has ignored the growth in the Australian population over that period, the feminisation of general practice, and the drift of GPs out of the workforce.
In reality, the increase in GPs over the last 17 years has been less than 2% per annum and well behind the growth in the economy.
Demand for GPs has also increased substantially with an ageing population and more emphasis on preventive care - 1984 levels of care would not be acceptable to patients today.
The analysis by Access Economics clearly shows that the availability of GP services is not keeping up with patients' needs and the situation is getting worse.
How can the Minister talk about patient needs when the Government has never carried out or certainly never published a needs analysis?
The only conclusion is that the Government wants to dictate the needs of people and ration GP health care because, if the Minister systematically and honestly reviewed the actual need for services and their availability, she would find out for herself that there is a nationwide shortage of GPs.
The AMA recognises that the Government has a number of programs designed to try to plug the gaps but 150 doctors for outer urban Australia will not cover a shortfall of at least 500.
We support most of the programs although we believe that some are missing their target badly. Overall, they miss the fundamentals of the problem which are training enough GPs and making medical practice in rural areas and low income regions attractive.
The most disappointing feature of the Government's initial response to the very thorough work by Access Economics is that they appear to want to deny a problem that is staring them in the face.
Patients are not able to get the health care treatment they need under existing policies and we all need to be working on the problem not pretending it does not exist.
CONTACT: Dr David Rivett 0419 285 550
Dr Robert Bain 0418 622 791