BETTER cash incentives are needed to lure doctors away from Adelaide’s leafy east to the city’s northern suburbs, a SA primary healthcare organisation says.
Northern Adelaide Medicare Local, which represents 112 clinics in Adelaide’s north says its practices want the Federal Government to offer greater incentives, such as additional pay, to encourage young GPs to settle in the Tea Tree Gully, Playford, Salisbury and Gawler council areas.
Chief executive Debra Lee says the area’s GP workforce is ageing and young GPs are reluctant to settle in northern areas.
She warns of a looming doctor shortage if the issue is not addressed.
“Unless we are able to retain the newer generation of GPs, the likelihood is that we will have GP shortages, which could be quite significant, in five years time when some of these older GPs retire and leave their practices,” she said.
Ms Lee said practices in suburbs including Golden Grove and Elizabeth were already constantly advertising for doctors.
Most GPs chose to practice in the city or eastern suburbs, for lifestyle reasons and because workloads in those areas tended to be lighter.
She said city-based GPs tended to work in clinics from 9am to 5pm, while those in the northern suburbs were often faced with more complex medical cases, leading to out of hours work.
“If you want to draw more GPs to this area you would have to have a really good reason for them to come further out than the CBD,” she said.
A trend for medical graduates to enter specialty fields rather than general practice further exacerbated the problem.
“There’s no shortage of trainees and medical students in medical schools, but they are universally choosing to specialise, right across Australia.”
Family Health Medical Group has four general practices across the northern suburbs, including at Elizabeth, Golden Grove, Paralowie and Greenwith.
Co-owner Dr Neil Stanford plans to open a fifth clinic in Elizabeth Vale and said a lack of interest from local doctors had forced him to employ medical practitioners from overseas.
“We have been advertising for new doctors for years and have ended up recruiting basically all our doctors from the United Kingdom because no one is applying,” Dr Stanford said.
“By August 2015, we will have 18 doctors in our group and 14 of those are from the UK.”
The managers of two GP businesses in the north-eastern suburbs said the situation was further complicated by a Federal Government scheme which stipulated overseas doctors must practice for their first 10 years in Australia in certain suburbs.
Clovercrest Family Practice manager Dianne Engelhardy said
said her Modbury bulk-billing practice had seven doctors but was struggling to keep up with demand, turning away about 50 patients a day, and needed one more full-time doctor on its books.
A statement provided by the Federal Department of Health said incentives, such as grants of up to $40,000, were already offered to encourage doctors to relocate from inner to outer metropolitan suburbs.