Making General Practice viable in rural and remote Australia
It is becoming increasingly difficult for GPs to have a viable business in rural and remote Australia given the difficulties accessing practice staff and the high cost of building infrastructure for which there may not be an investment return.
We need to make it more attractive for GPs to work in rural and remote Australia.
Key points
- There is a shortage of GPs in rural and remote Australia which will only increase as the rural GP workforce ages and retires. There are not enough new graduates who choose to work in a rural or remote area to replace those retiring.
- Primary health care is now based on multi-disciplinary primary health care teams, including practice nurses and a variety of allied health professionals, as well as practice managers. This development has partly arisen because of Strengthening Medicare changes which significantly reward this new approach. This represents a major challenge for GPs in small rural and remote communities.
- There is a trend away from direct ownership of practices by GPs. Contributing factors to this trend include the significant investment required to establish or buy a practice and the complex business administration required.
- We therefore need to understand how we can more eff ectively support GPs to work in multidisciplinary teams in rural and remote areas, without them necessarily having to own and run a practice.
Strategies
