Mali drops major announcement for regional healthcare

On Friday morning, Prime Minister Peter Malinauskas and Health Minister Chris Picton announced a major boost to regional healthcare, promising to deploy a further 60 GPs to regional locations.

From 2025, the 60 GPs and rural generalists in training will go to regional locations across the state employed by SA Health for a period of five years, rather than having to change employers every six or 12 months during their placement.

Mr Malinauskas said the boost will help regions retain doctors in problem areas.

“We need GPs who train in regional communities, but then stay in regional communities,” he said.

He said the additional 60 GPs would join the 20 already training in Riverland.

“This has been achieved so far in Riverland and we want to replicate the success there in the rest of the state.”

“If we have 80 young GPs trained in a stable way in regional communities, they are much more likely to stay in those communities.

“We looked for a program that would break the connection between regional GPs who move from one place to another, only to end up back in metropolitan Adelaide. This is a model that invites them to commit themselves to a community for a long period in the distant future.

“Wherever you live in South Australia, I think in a modern economy you would reasonably expect access to GP services, and as a government we want to make that possible. Ultimately, we need young general practitioners who are committed to rural and regional medicine.”

The Prime Minister said the additional rural GPs will add to the recently employed 1,400 additional doctors in SA Health.

Mr Picton said he was “pushing and pushing” to roll out the program across the state.

“In recent years we have seen some real hope in the extent to which we can train regional doctors so that we can deliver the skills and workforce that regional areas are crying out for.

Loading containment…

“However, it will take time to scale up, it will take a number of years. But we are hopeful that it will soon yield results across the state.”

Under the new model, GPs will be deployed in hospitals and private practices across five regional and national local health networks in the Barossa, Hills and Fleurieu, Eyre and Far North, Flinders and Upper North, Yorke and Northern, and the Limestone Coast.

The trial is part of an expansion of resources announced in the October 2022 and May 2023 federal budgets, which will last until 2028.

Opposition Regional Health Services spokesperson Penny Pratt said they welcomed any announcement that made it easier for health workers to work in regional South Australia, but said today’s announcement did not go far enough.

“The opposition has long called on Peter Malinauskas to provide competitive incentives to attract doctors and nurses who are desperately needed in our rural towns,” she said.

“Other states such as Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia have aggressively poached our frontline health workers with tempting offers to pay for their moving costs, bonuses and education costs.

“Peter Malinauskas must make regional South Australia a priority and put attractive incentives into this year’s budget so we can give our struggling, underfunded health system the workforce it so desperately needs.”

Loading containment…