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Rescue package for rural medical workforce
2 March 2009.
AMA Victoria has presented the Brumby Government with a Rural workforce rescue package aimed at increasing state government support for Victoria’s worsening rural and regional doctor shortages.
The proposed $94.6 million Rescue package would assist rural and regional Victoria in retaining its local doctors and attracting more medical practitioners to areas in need.
AMA Victoria President Dr Doug Travis said the State Government could not afford to keep overlooking the severe doctor shortages affecting rural and regional areas.
“Country Victoria missed out in the 2008-09 State Budget and it continues to suffer,” he said. “The disparity between rural and metropolitan services is growing because there aren’t enough doctors in rural and regional Victoria. We can’t keep ignoring the problem.”
Dr Travis said the expected influx of medical graduates in 2013 would help to fill workforce shortages but action was needed in the meantime. “We are eagerly anticipating the influx of new graduates but the medial workforce shortage will get a lot worse before it eases.
“The Victorian Government needs to act now to improve access to good quality health care and ensure that we have enough experienced doctors in the system to train the next generation of doctors. We need a rural medial workforce rescue package in the May budget.”
Dr Travis said a range of measures were needed to address the doctor shortage and the Rescue package focused on reducing some of the barriers that prevented doctors from working or staying rural and regional areas.
“We need to improve working conditions for general practitioners providing hospital services. Many of these doctors are burdened with excessive workloads, demanding on-call rosters, after-hours calls and little professional support.
“The Rescue package recommends rewarding doctors for providing valuable medial services and aims to cut down unsustainable workloads. It advocates better staffing ratios at rural hospitals to reduce the risk of fatigue and burden, particularly on junior doctors.
“We need to acknowledge what a great job our rural and regional doctors do in caring for local communities, and ensure they have sustainable workloads, and are well-supported.”
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AMA Victoria’s Rural workforce rescue package includes:
- Payments for after hours consultations
- Hospital rural location allowances
- Procedural Visiting Medical Officer allowance
- Sustainable on-call allowances
- Continuing Medical Education (CME) allowance, and
- Retention allowances.
Visit www.amavic.com.au to see the submission
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