Alarming health stats reveal hospital system in need of long-term investment
June 15, 2022Strong health budget, but focus on long-term viability needed: AMA (NSW)
June 21, 2022AMA (NSW) welcomes the State Government’s suite of incentives to attract and retain health workers to rural NSW but calls for similar measures to be applied to doctors to shore up severe workforce shortages in the bush.
“Doctors are central to the provision of healthcare, and we need to ensure that measures aimed at building our regional health workforce are extended to all clinicians,” said AMA (NSW) President, Dr Michael Bonning.
The parliamentary inquiry into rural health found in its report that there is a critical shortage of health professionals across rural, regional, and remote communities, which had contributed to staffing deficiencies in hospitals and health services. It also found the residents in non-metropolitan areas had inferior access to health and hospital services which led to instances of patients receiving substandard levels of care.
The report included 22 findings and 44 recommendations, including calls for the implementation of recruitment and retention measures to address health workforce shortages.
“The recent parliamentary inquiry into rural health recommended NSW Health review employment conditions and remuneration of doctors-in-training, as well as incentives of GPs working as Visiting Medical Officers. This includes adapting the VMO model to recognise the contribution of GP VMOs to regional communities and to the changing nature of their role.
“We are pleased to see the NSW Government is looking to bolster health staff through recruitment and retention incentives – having a strong health team will help attract doctors to work regionally.
“Extending extras such as study leave, accommodation, and training allowances to doctors will complement this strategy and strengthen the delivery of healthcare in regional and rural areas. For instance, doctors-in-training who train in regional areas are not provided with supports, including accommodation, when they rotate to metropolitan hospitals.
“NSW has made clear that it accepts there is a need to improve healthcare access in rural NSW. We want to ensure that recruitment and retention measures targeted at doctors are a key plank of that plan.
“We look forward to further investment announcements that demonstrate a long-term plan to the recruitment and retention of doctors to regional NSW,” Dr Bonning said.
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