The Rural Doctors Network has welcomed a change in the incentives offered to doctors in areas of work force shortages after more than a decade of lobbying.
Many rural practitioners have complained the District of Workforce Shortage (DWS) and the Australian Standard Geographical Classification – Remoteness Area (ASGC-RA) systems were inequitable.
Federal Assistant Health Minister, Fiona Nash, has announced changes in the classification system so that it better reflects which towns need doctors the most.
“The government is acting to address these problems by moving to a new DWS system, that will use the latest ABS population data and the most recent medical services data to more accurately determine which town is the most under serviced,” she said.
Minister Nash said the ASGC-RA classification will also be changed and will use the Modified Monash Model to allow support and resources to be focussed on areas most in need.
She said it classifies areas in Inner and Outer Regional Australia according to local town size and means Gundagai will be in a different category to Hobart and Sale will be in a different category to Mildura.
The Chair of the New South Wales Rural doctors Network, Rick Newton, said the old system was inequitable because it classified towns of several hundred people the same as those with more than 10,000.
He said the Network has been campaigning against the system since it was established in 2001 and a new proposal for classifying areas has been on the table for several years.
“The government’s had it since 2012 and it’s only today that we hear that Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash has announced that that they’re going to look at it, they’re going to abandon the RA classification and look at this new classification and that’s a great thing,” Dr Newton said.
“Under the old RA system the classifications for incentives is the same for this town for say a town the size of Parkes which is 12,000 as against less than 300.”
Dr Newton said under the old system, if his surgery had moved three kilometres over the railway line at Tullamore, he would be entitled about a third more in incentives.
However he said many doctors were far more disadvantaged.
“There are a lot of doctors in far worse situations right out past Lake Cargelligo or Condobolin,” he said.
“They’re all in a situation where their incentive for going there is no where it should be when you compare it to incentives given to doctors in much larger regional centres that are much more attractive places to go,” he said.