The Central West Hospital Health Service (HHS) says a new model for attracting and retaining doctors to the region is paying dividends.
The model sees doctors with a particular advanced skill paid as GP specialists and shared between local hospitals and private clinics.
Executive director of medical services Dr David Rimmer said the model works because doctors’ skills complement each other.
“Supporting each other, being part of a team of 15 senior doctors rather than one or two doctors is a small cottage industry in tiny towns where there’s nobody to just run questions past, nobody to help, nobody to ask for,” he said.
Dr Rimmer said it worked because the health service took on the financial risk.
“To set up a private practice from scratch as a doctor, it costs just south of half-a-million dollars and doctors aren’t prepared to do that,” he said.
“They’re not prepared to come to a small country town and spend that money, and that’s what we found when we first started as an HHS looking at why doctors weren’t coming.
“It was because it was too much risk for them.”
Authorities said the success of the new model could mean locums might not be needed in the central west next year.