Community & Business
13 June, 2021
Local GPs meet with Minister over doctor shortage
WITH GP clinics continuing to close around the Kennedy electorate due to a Doctor shortage, Bob Katter has convened a meeting with Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, Secretary of the Health Department, Dr Brendan Murphy, and three prominent doctors from the electorate - Dr Lisa Fraser (Gordonvale), Dr Grant Manypeney (Mareeba) and Dr Rod Catton (Innisfail).
WITH GP clinics continuing to close around the Kennedy electorate due to a Doctor shortage, Bob Katter has convened a meeting with Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, Secretary of the Health Department, Dr Brendan Murphy, and three prominent doctors from the electorate - Dr Lisa Fraser (Gordonvale), Dr Grant Manypeney (Mareeba) and Dr Rod Catton (Innisfail).
The doctors have spent extensive hours working on a plan to address the doctor shortage crisis with immediate and long term solutions presented to the Minister.
The reasons for the doctor shortage include underfunded incentives to attract young doctors to the regions, and a shortfall of international doctors due to COVID border closures.
Gordonvale’s Dr Lisa Fraser said she was thrilled that the Minister saw that the situation was important enough to make time to hear their story and listen to their ideas.
“He was reassuring that rural was the next clear focus of the department, acknowledging that COVID outbreaks and COVID vaccination had consumed a large amount of their time and resources to this point, and rightly so,” she said.
“We discussed how telehealth items were a huge benefit to rural communities where distances and weather impact travel and accessing doctors.
"I recommended that all telehealth items continue, rather than be contracted to only 2 time-based ones.
“We also discussed how successful the vaccination program has been in general practice.
"Our practice has full clinics and zero wastage and are expanding numbers. Patients report that having a doctor at the site of vaccination builds trust and improves uptake.”
Dr Lisa Fraser said incentives for Aussie doctors and pathways for foreign doctors has worked to an extent, but it hasn’t been funded adequately to achieve the required outcome, especially in the past 10 years.
“The focus should be primarily on Australian junior doctors and GP trainees as both a short and long-term solution, with particular attention to properly funding the training program,” she said.
“This program has suffered severe chronic underfunding over the past 10 years. If you cut corners in training quality, you get inefficient spending, unsafe patient care and maldistribution.
“The investment for overseas doctors should focus on the processes that engage overseas doctors to avoid excessive waits and to support them through entry examinations with the goal of achieving minimum standards of clinical skills.
“Incentives for Australian training doctors to this point have been way out of the ballpark, financially. Previous programs have gone a little way in recruitment, but not nearly enough to be a real driver for change.”
Kennedy MP, Bob Katter said the Minister and Dr Brendan Murphy acknowledged the issue and he will continue to push them to make sure something is done.
“I think they now have a much better understanding of the rural medicine issues at hand, and there is now a way through in the short term,” Mr Katter said.
“To attract Australian doctors, there has to be an extra $80,000 a year per doctor provided to doctors in rural private practices.
"The State hospital outpatients are effectively just an emergency operation, so money must be invested in our rural GPs.
“If the Government can find billions for an Olympic Games in Brisbane, surely we should be able to get adequate health care in the bush. We’re dying while Brisbane parties on."
