The Central West Hospital and Health Service says a new approach to recruitment has tripled the number of permanent resident doctors in the region.
The service has gone from five permanent GPs working last year in the central west with external rotating locums, to 15 permanent doctors currently, and three more planned appointments.
Board chairman Ed Warren says it has been able to establish a group practice, where all doctors are employed by the service and then released to work in GP practices.
He says it is a major turnaround.
“Where there is a will there is a way,” he said.
“I think all local governments and communities in the central west didn’t think there was much of an effort into attracting doctors in the central west anyway but that is in the past and we have a different approach now, and that’s just a different attitude altogether,” he said.
“Everyone can see that there are opportunities here.”
He says the new approach has promoted the central west as an attractive place for doctors to work, train and get experience in rural medicine.
“With the doctors being resident, this allows them to work as a team to provide patients with a high level of care, as well as support each other,” he said.
“We will always probably use locums but on a very, very restricted basis.
“We are able to return that money that was going into that costly exercise, back into services.”