THE much-heralded Federal Government policy breakthrough on health funding won’t address an absence of doctors in the bush, with NSW rural doctors insisting on a plan similar to that in Queensland to address the crisis.
Coolah-based NSW Rural Doctors Association president, Dr Tilak Dissanayake, says although “any reform is welcome” the deal did not address the fact rural areas were “bleeding doctors”.
“Any government has an obligation to provide equal health services to every citizen – but that is not the case for rural NSW where 50 per cent of doctors are overseas-trained, and retention is generally two or three years which is not sustainable,” Dr Dissanayake said.
“The workforce out here is aging, burned out with excess workloads – it’s not fair.
“It’s time for the government to implement a national model for training, recruiting and retaining rural health practitioners.”
Rural Doctors Australia president, Dr Paul Mara, said he hoped a single funding pool would lead to better co-ordination of planning and service delivery.
The peak body is pushing for a national advanced training pathway for rural generalist doctors based on the proven successful Queensland Rural Generalist Pathway model, which provides guaranteed advanced training to equip future rural generalist doctors for the challenges of rural practice, early entry (straight from university), ongoing support for trainees in the pathway, and professional and financial recognition for graduates of the pathway.
Dr Paul Mara, who is based at Gundagai, said he would adopt a “wait and see” approach to the health deal and whether it would mean improvements in the bush.
He said he would judge the success of the deal on whether, in three or four years, regional centres had good hospitals with trained doctors.
“We can only work with what we’ve got so if it works it works but if it doesn’t, it won’t be through a lack of trying on our part,” he said.
The health deal was announced this month after State and territory leaders attended a marathon Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Canberra, with Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, wielding a big stick – she had threatened to hold back $16.4 billion in funding for health unless a deal was done.
Eight hours later, agreement was reached to create a single national funding pool for health.
Funds from all levels of government go into the pool, then to the State Governments and on to public hospitals.
Ditching the plan by former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, where the States would keep 30 per cent of GST revenue for health spending, Ms Gillard said the new plan would improve transparency, cut red tape, and expose poorly performing hospitals.
She said it guaranteed more hospital beds, more local control and less waiting for patients, as well as a review of emergency management disaster payments and disaster resilience.
NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally, said the outcome was that NSW retained the 488 beds and additional $1.2 billion agreed to in April 2010, while the State’s share of $16.4 billion funding was almost $5.5 billion – an extra $260 million on the original deal.
But Opposition leader, Barry O’Farrell, has vowed not to rubber stamp any arrangement entered into by Ms Keneally, with the Premier deriding his stance by saying he would be the first State leader to hand money back to the Federal Government.
When and how much of this windfall makes its way into rural and regional health remains to be seen, but rural doctors are disappointed by the lack of action to date and feel those outside the capital cities are consistently overlooked.
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