A new strategy is being looked at to attract and retain general practitioners and specialists in Naracoorte.
Limestone Coast Local Health Network Board chairman Grant King says the strategy will focus on retaining medical graduates in the region.
“We need to make sure there is more training, so we continue to work with universities and training providers to work on models,” Mr King said.
Mr King said there was a model that was used in the Riverland area where doctors were being trained and retained, and that’s something that all the other regions were looking at.
“Often people coming into the region, particularly international medical graduates, work in the region and then move onto the metropolitan areas for a whole lot of reasons, so we need to make sure that we can find a way to keep people in the regions practising longer, and that requires a whole lot of things.
“It is challenging right across the health system and right across the country to recruit people in some of these specialist areas.
“We work closely with a range of people, with the government, and with the department to ensure that we can play our bit to attract people to our needs in our region.
“So that’s ongoing. It’s a highly competitive environment, we just need to be good at it.”
He said the Board has also engaged with the local GP clinics to get feedback on how they are retaining specialists.
“We met with the GPs in Naracoorte just recently and had a discussion around how they are dealing with the same problem – how do you get GPs, how do you recruit them, and how do you train them?
“One of the areas that, of course, people would know about is the use of locum services. People are more mobile these days, so it’s almost an industry that’s developed around locum GPs.
“So, people might be practising in their hometown, but find it attractive to provide services for a short period of time somewhere else, and that impacts the service at their hometown.”
He said the shortage was a huge challenge and needed a lot of work.
Mr King said consultation was underway for the upcoming Naracoorte Service Plan, which would address many issues, including the doctor-to-patient ratio.
“Our plan is consistent with the service planning in the region. So right now, the service planning around the Naracoorte Hospital is happening.
“So that’s the process where the staff, the health advisory council, clinicians, and other stakeholders support the board in providing advice on services provided now and into the future.
“That plan will pretty much drive where we are going into the future, and there is no doubt it will pick up on some of those areas the people will raise in the planning process.”
This article appeared in the Naracoorte Community News.
