Chris Oldfield, Naracoorte Community News
A fresh agreement between SA’s rural doctors and the State Government has been signed.
The agreement, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), aims to ease a rural GP crisis sweeping the State, affecting country health care and hospitals, including Naracoorte.
Government contracts expired 19 months ago, causing grave concerns for SA branches of the Australian Medical Association (AMASA) and Rural Doctor Association (RDASA).
Premier Stephen Marshall last week hailed the MOU as a “landmark agreement”.
“Over the years the remuneration of GPs working in rural SA had fallen significantly behind other jurisdictions, making it harder to recruit and retain GPs in regional and remote locations,” Mr Marshall said.
He said the Government would invest an estimated $188 million over two years.
Health Minister Stephen Wade said SA faced many challenges in recruiting, training and developing the health professionals needed to deliver health services in rural areas.
“We are doing everything we can to ensure the highest quality health care is available to all South Australians no matter where they live,” he said.
SA Health’s Rural Support Service (RSS) chief clinical adviser Hendrika Meyer said the agreement included a 20 per cent funding increase “to support the engagement of general practitioners working in country and rural health settings across our six regional local health networks.
“The MOU outlines a greater range of payment models for GPs, a sign-up bonus of up to $50,000 for a doctor working (in a remote community)…and improved infrastructure and IT to support GPs in providing better care to their patients.
“Each regional LHN will work to implement GP agreements that align to the MOU and support appropriate models of care across their health services.”
Dr Meyer thanked rural GPs for their “vital contribution in supporting public hospital health services in our regional and rural communities across SA”.
Shadow Health Minister Chris Picton said the Marshall Government had said it would improve country health, “but we have only seen it badly deteriorate under their watch”.
“Nowhere is a bigger example of the shocking state of country health under this Government than Naracoorte which is now relying on locums, and sometimes doesn’t have doctors at all,” he said.
Naracoorte Health Service was without an emergency doctor for at least eight days during January.
“There’s only one reason the Government won’t reveal what the true costs are of locum services – because they must be shockingly high,” Mr Picton said.
“Patients have been suffering because often the Naracoorte hospital has been left without medical services – and taxpayers suffer because the costs are so much higher for locum doctors … up to $3000 a day…”
He said Labor’s package included $8 million for Naracoorte hospital.
RDASA president and general practitioner (GP) Dr Peter Rischbieth said that maintaining a local rural doctor workforce in a regional area was the difference between medical services being available and entire services shutting down.
Services shutting down resulted in significant travel times for people “as well as poorer health outcomes,” he said.
AMASA) vice-president and GP Dr John Williams said the new agreement provided a minimum guarantee for rural GPs.
“For many rural doctors, the agreement will change the way their remuneration works, making rural hospital work more comparable in terms of conditions and remuneration to that received by their metropolitan public hospital colleagues,” he said.
“It recognises and reflects the on-call and out-of-hours work that rural doctors consistently perform, and increases opportunities for us to influence how our local hospitals manage patient care.”
This article appeared in the Naracoorte Community News.
Related stories: Rural doctor update – Government still paying locums, not locals; Gov/ Dr dispute close to being resolved; Taxpayers funding locum doctors.
