Portrait of a bush crisis
Dr Joseph Romeo has money to build a super clinic but no-one to staff it. Andrew Bracey paints a picture of a town fighting for its medical survival.
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rural doctors
The following articles have the tag rural doctors
Top End’s super clinic workforce woes slowly improving
AFTER initially struggling to find any permanent GPs, Northern Territory’s sole operating GP super clinic now has eight – and the Commonwealth has said a formerly scrapped second super clinic is once again looking set for the Top End.
More syphilis testing needed in Queensland
AN OUTBREAK of syphilis in north-west Queensland is concerning health authorities, leading a local sexual health specialist to call for a boost in testing.
Payment bungle may lead to rural doctor ‘avalanche’
THE bungling of incentive payments worth about $1.3 million will be the last straw for overworked country GPs, according to doctors’ groups preparing to blast the government at a Senate inquiry on Friday.
GP hotline four times pricier than a VMO
RURAL doctors are claiming the government’s after-hours GP hotline has saved Australia’s public hospitals about one emergency presentation a week, at a cost of $1000 on each - well above the $75-$225 VMO call-out fee.
Fears Medicare Locals won’t be truly local
RURAL groups are concerned that geographical boundaries for Medicare Locals, as drawn up by the AGPN, will create organisations that are not really local at all. Last week, the Federal Government unveiled plans to create between 44 and 60 Medicare Locals and hand them responsibility for improving and coordinating the delivery of primary care in their area. But under the options proposed, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and non-metropolitan South Australia would all be served by just one Medicare Local each. Dr Jenny May, chair of the National Rural Health Alliance argued that such an arrangement was ...
Workforce: getting the numbers right
Australia’s new health workforce agency has a mammoth task ahead: to solve the country’s workforce woes. Rosemarie Milsom examines whether it’s up to the job.
A third of Vic rural doctors plan to leave in five years
MORE than a third of rural doctors in Victoria are set to leave their posts within five years, according to a recent survey by AMA Victoria. The survey of 233 rural doctors found 37% planned to leave rural practice in five years, 29% planned to leave in 5-10 years, while 34% planned to remain for 10 years or more. AMA Victoria president Dr Harry Hemley said the prospect of losing more than a third of the state’s rural workforce in such a short time was very concerning. “We knew we would lose a substantial number of ...
Rural deaths highlight need for rescue package
IT SEEMS crazy that, at a time when governments are saying patient care is a top priority for them, I still hear regularly from rural doctors who have been forced to spend hours manually ventilating a critically ill patient while desperately trying to find a tertiary hospital to accept them. What’s even more surprising is that these patients are often knocked back by hospital after hospital before one can be found to take them. Sometimes, unfortunately, it is too late. It really causes one to ask why state governments are so quick to shut down rural hospitals ...
Rural GPs espouse online mental health training
AN interactive online mental health training program is drawing together isolated rural doctors in online learning communities. The ACRRM-run program allows GPs to log into an interactive learning module to discuss patients' mental health issues with colleagues across the country and ask questions of trainers. Director Dr Louise Stone said the program allowed GPs to share their own experiences, advice and problems in delivering mental health care to patients, given the lack of local referral support services. “For [rural GPs in a small community] that layer of objectivity is often not there – they can’t refer ...
Mine the expertise of rural doctors’ groups
AS any rural doctor will tell you, things can work differently in the bush – the tyranny of distance, available health workforce, complexity of cases and other factors often mean that what works in a city practice or city hospital just doesn’t have legs in the rural health setting. The tendency for governments and policymakers to simply overlook the differences between metropolitan and rural healthcare delivery is what makes the existence of organisations like RDAA so critical in providing rural-specific input on health policy – and why their views (and the views of individual rural doctors) will be ...