The Great Rural Health Funding Drought
The Chair of the AMA's Rural Reference Group (RRG), Dr David Rivett, said today that all Australian governments - State and Federal - must urgently address the funding drought in country Australia that has left health infrastructure, workforce and services neglected and severely depleted.
Dr Rivett, a GP in Batemans Bay, NSW, said the picture of rural health shown on last night's Four Corners program on ABC TV was a sad indictment of how our governments are treating country Australians as second-class citizens with rundown hospitals and a disappearing health workforce.
"Last night's program showed clearly how State Governments continue to close hospitals and cut back on services in rural areas, which is forcing the rural medical workforce to retire or move to the capital cities or larger regional centres," Dr Rivett said.
"Skilled doctors can no longer access local hospitals to provide much needed services and to practise essential skills such as delivering babies.
"There was a time when the challenging and complex nature of country medicine was the major attraction for doctors to take up rural practice and stay there for life - but the incentives have been replaced by cost-cutting, hospital closures and service cutbacks.
"If Governments remove the infrastructure or let it run down, then many doctors no longer have a reason to stay, especially when the hours can be so punishing.
"Old and malfunctioning equipment and poorly maintained hospital wards are causing operations to be needlessly cancelled.
"This is a ridiculous situation in 21st century Australia - the rural health funding drought is keeping doctors away from rural areas and patients are suffering as a result.
"The doctors will return if Governments provide more resources and incentives for GPs to stay in their practices, for other GPs to move to country practices, and for specialists like obstetricians and oncologists to provide more outreach services.
"A good start would be to properly fund a quality training experience for prospective rural doctors.
"Governments need to invest more money in recruitment and retention programs and outreach programs to encourage metro specialists to spend more time visiting rural areas, and rural doctors need more access to locum relief programs in order to address the high burnout rates.
"Country Australians deserve better for their health and the health of their families," Dr Rivett said.