General Practitioner Incentives

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:42): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the government offer financial incentives to attract and retain GPs in South Australia? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: In a nationally competitive environment, and with significant pressures on our emergency departments, the Victorian Labor government is offering GPs in training a $40,000 incentive.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:43): The good news is that we have increased a range of different incentives that we are doing through SA Health, firstly in terms of offering assistance for people up to $15,000 in terms of relocating to South Australia or, in fact, if people are taking up a job in regional South Australia to provide them with that assistance to move to a regional area in South Australia.

In addition, we have recently brokered a new deal between the South Australian government and also between the AMA and the Rural Doctors Association covering the arrangements between doctors who work for our public hospitals right across regional South Australia. As part of that new arrangement, we now have additional incentives in place for doctors to sign up and be part of those arrangements working in regional areas, working with SA Health, providing those services in public hospitals. I believe there are over 30 additional areas that are now receiving payments of up to $10,000, and then in remote areas they will be able to receive up to $50,000 if they sign up to be part of those programs to work in our public hospitals, as well as providing GP services.

The other key area of work that we are doing is in relation to what is called the single employer model. This is addressing the issue that we face in terms of helping to attract people into working as GPs, particularly in regional areas, and also as rural practitioners who have a general scope of services covering emergency departments, obstetrics, anaesthetics, etc., in regional areas.

There has been great success over the past couple of years working in the Riverland on this project. I particularly want to thank Professor Paul Worley, who is leading the work up there, along with Wayne Champion and the team in the Riverland Mallee Coorong Local Health Network. We are seeing doctors wanting to sign up and be part of that program, become GPs, and then, ultimately, buying houses in the area and becoming part of the local community in the Riverland.

We are now working with the commonwealth government to see if we can get the exemptions to the Medicare rules that have enabled that program—as a trial to start—to now be expanded to other areas in regional South Australia. This is something that I know the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners have been particularly interested in, as well as the other college in this area, ACRRM, as a great opportunity in terms of the potential to get more people to become a GP, particularly in terms of regional areas. I think that there is scope down the track to look at whether that could even be extended to outer metropolitan areas as well, but our focus at the moment particularly is on those regional areas.

We have a good relationship with the Royal Australian College of General Practice. We meet with the chair of the South Australian board on a frequent basis, and are always keen to discuss any other opportunities that we may have to work together, of course bearing in mind as well that primary care primarily under our federation arrangements is a federal responsibility. Obviously, we need to continue as a state government to make sure that there is pressure on the federal government to address the issues that we have seen in terms of Medicare, bulk billing and GPs over the past decade.

You can see in the Report on Government Services that was released just last week how over the past 10 years the number of people waiting for a GP has gone up and up for people waiting for urgent care from a GP over 24 hours. I absolutely can tell the house that I believe the new health minister, Mark Butler, is very committed to addressing this issue, but it is really turning apart the past 10 years, where we saw cuts and underinvestment in terms of Medicare, to address that issue.