FEW sectors have done it tougher over the past couple of years than our healthcare system.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Whether it's nurses being stretched to the limit in over-crowded, under-funded hospitals, unacceptably long waits for an ambulance or a lack of accessible services as we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Newcastle Herald has documented many of these stories, the latest being Anita Beaumont's report on the critical shortage of GPs which could soon leave some Hunter towns "up the creek" without a doctor.
National modelling predicts there will be a shortfall of almost 11,500 GPs by 2032 but Hettie du Plessis, of Waratah Medical Services, told the Herald "if you dropped 1000 GPs in NSW, you wouldn't even know where they disappeared to, because we need so many. Everyone is struggling (now)."
The recently concluded, year-long, parliamentary inquiry into rural, regional and remote health resulted in 44 recommendations being handed down. These included the NSW government working with the federal government to increase rural GP and specialist training positions.
The $883 million budget announcement includes incentives of up to $10,000 for workers to take up and maintain jobs in rural and regional NSW. It also includes funding for increased training for nursing graduates and medical interns, expanding rural GP roles, increasing Indigenous cadetships and HECS incentives for allied health professionals.
As Dr Simon Holliday, a GP and addiction physician in Taree, says, initiatives like these are good but they are only one piece of the puzzle. Our country's reliance on overseas-trained doctors is one problem. Newcastle's status as a sometimes-metro-sometimes-not zone further complicates the region's ability to attract GPs, with Morriset and Fletcher's battles around being given Distribution Priority Area (DPA) status from the federal government highlighted in the report.
DPA status allows international medical graduates working in these areas to be eligible for Medicare but Ms du Plessis said even with the classification, it still takes about a year to recruit a doctor from overseas due to red tape, paperwork, and having to jump through various "hoops".
It's crucial that roadblocks to filling GP positions are removed because in a country like ours, in a region like ours, it seems crazy that people should be waiting days, or weeks, to schedule an appointment due to a doctor shortage. Dr Holliday says "unless we get some coordination and some vision to solve this, I think we're up the creek".
That can't be the result. We have to start paddling.