Government 'Buries' Report That Recommends Greater Support for Rural GPs
AMA President, Dr Rosanna Capolingua, today urged the Government to urgently implement recommendations to support and bolster Australia's rural medical workforce, which are contained in a Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) report that has been 'buried' for more than six months.
The report, Review of the Rural Retention Program, was completed last year but has not yet been publicly released.
The AMA has obtained the report under Freedom of Information provisions.
Dr Capolingua said it is surprising with the critical shortage of rural and regional doctors that the Government would delay introducing measures to retain doctors in country towns and attract a new generation of GPs to join them.
"This report contains practical and affordable ongoing solutions to the rural medical workforce crisis," Dr Capolingua said.
"It shows that the Rural Retention Program (RRP) has been successful and will continue to be successful in making country practice attractive and rewarding - but only if the Program is properly supported.
"The report was prepared following broad consultation with doctors and communities and shows clearly that the RRP is helping to retain GPs in rural and remote areas.
"But the report reveals that the Program needs better funding, streamlined eligibility requirements and better administration if it is going to continue keeping GPs in country areas.
"It should also be extended to cover GPs and other specialists working in rural areas.
"The AMA is calling on the Government to resurrect this report and get the RRP working for rural communities as a matter of urgency," Dr Capolingua said.
Key recommendations of the Review of the Rural Retention Program include:
- increasing the amount of payments made under RRP to a realistic level
- introducing indexed grants
- making RRP grants non-taxable
- expanding the program to include non-financial support to rural GPs including infrastructure, equipment, business and management support, on-call support, and housing, family, and education assistance.
- removing the waiting period eligibility criteria for the grants
- examining the feasibility of applying RRP grants to practices rather than individual GPs
- examining the feasibility of incremental payment scales based on duration of service
- including the range of work undertaken by rural and remote GPs that is currently not eligible under the program - for example, hospital work and procedural medicine
The Report was conducted by Health Outcomes International for DoHA, and was completed in December 2006.
The RRP, which has been operating for around eight years, provides grants to GPs based on their location and length of service in a rural area.
In 2004-05, just under $20 million was paid out under the RRP, with grants ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 a year.
The Report's recommendations are consistent with the AMA's 2007-08 Federal Budget submission, which states that the 'generally successful rural retention programs are losing their effectiveness as the real value of incentives falls behind living costs and the cost of medical practice'.