A remote Queensland GP says an overhaul of the doctor classification system is a step in the right direction.
Medical groups say the current system, which provides financial incentives to remote doctors, does not distinguish enough between regional cities like Cairns and remote areas like Mount Isa.
The Federal Government has announced a review of the classifications, with an outcome expected by the end of the year.
Assistant federal Health Minister Fiona Nash said changes would be made to the definition of ‘rural’ to ensure smaller regional centres were not put in the same category for incentive payments and funding as larger regional areas.
Cloncurry doctor and former Rural Doctors Association (RDA) president, Sheilagh Cronin, said an overhaul would help to attract and retain GPs in smaller, remote communities.
“We can say that it will definitely be a move in the right direction, that it will improve the situation, that it’s not going to solve it no, but we are very hopeful that it will make things better and that’s the advice that we’ve given the Government and that it is based on modelling which has been done by academics,” she said.
The RDA said it hoped a training program for young doctors would be reinstated because it had helped to attract GPs to the bush.
The Federal Government is reviewing a decision to suspend the program that saw young doctors sent to remote area to undergo general practice training.
Dr Cronin said it was a program that had seen real results in remote Queensland.
“It has been very successful in some areas and, for instance, in Cloncurry, our first doctor who was under that program came back as a registrar and worked for us for three years and did his fellowship,” she said.
“So it delivered very motivated young doctors to come and work with us for a period of between three and six months.”
Meanwhile, the South West Hospital and Health Service has praised the Federal Government pledge to change the classification system that it said disadvantaged rural practices.
The South West Hospital and Health Service executive director of medical services, Tom Gibson, said it would ensure services better reflect the community’s needs.
“In the past, communities from the size of Toowoomba down to the size of Charleville have all been lumped together in one funding classification and the Minister indicated that a new model will be applied to identify the need of smaller remote communities that are quite different from those larger, suburban communities,” he said.