Peterborough GP Services

The Hon. G.G. BROCK (Stuart) (14:37): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister please update my Peterborough community as to the progress that might have been made regarding their having access to a GP? With your leave and that of the house, sir, I will explain further.

Leave granted.

The Hon. G.G. BROCK: As members know, the Goyder's Line Medical clinic ceased being operational on 8 August, withdrawing their GP services to Peterborough people but keeping their clinics at Jamestown and Orroroo, where we still have a GP present. There has been correspondence to the minister's department and also to the federal Minister for Health; however, the community is still not aware of any improvement in their access to a GP without having to travel long distances, which many in this community do not have the ability or the means to do.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:38): I thank the member for Stuart for his question and his advocacy on behalf of his community—in particular, in this case, Peterborough. As we have talked about in this house before, the GP services in the Peterborough community have been provided for many, many years by the Goyder's Line Medical clinic. They recently made a decision that they were going to consolidate their services in both Jamestown and Orroroo and not provide those services in Peterborough. That is obviously something that is concerning to the Peterborough community, but I would not want to critique Goyder's Line, which has provided services to that community for a very long period of time. GP services, Medicare and primary health care are predominantly the area of responsibility of the federal government, but obviously it is something that everybody in the state is concerned about.

I know the member himself, as well as myself, have written to the federal minister about this issue, and we have received responses from Mark Butler about this issue. Obviously, the federal government are making a number of investments in terms of primary care to try to address issues not just in Peterborough but across all of regional Australia in terms of where there are issues of shortages.

However, of course we want to see this continually try to be addressed as soon as possible in terms of Peterborough. From our perspective of the state government, our primary responsibility is providing the hospital services. Those GPs were providing the services to cover the Peterborough hospital. We have now had to step in and engage locum services to provide coverage for the Peterborough hospital, which is obviously something we would rather not do, but we need to keep that hospital open and providing those critical services to the Peterborough community.

I have been very regularly engaged with the Yorke and Northern Local Health Network in terms of this issue. They have been talking, of course, to Goyder's Line to try to investigate any other ways in which we could look at how we could get these services re-established. One area that we are examining at the moment is an application that we could make to the commonwealth government to seek to make an exemption under the Medicare rules for what is called a COAG section 19(2) exemption.

This would enable the state government to be able to provide those Medicare billable services to the community. This is something that we use in a number of places across the state already, particularly in the member for Flinders' electorate, a lot on Eyre Peninsula where we have particular shortages of GPs. This is something that we are actively working on looking at making an application to the commonwealth at the moment.

We are currently in consultation, which is necessary under the processes for a 19(2); it is an application process requirement. That will be subject to federal government approval for that to happen. We have been working with the commonwealth on this matter already and liaising with them leading up to the finalisation of that submission. We are also exploring any other opportunities that we have to support primary care in the Yorke and Northern region.

One area that I have previously raised to the member but also to the house is that we have got a primary care pilot program that has enabled us to invest in some nurse practitioner roles across the state, which has been successful so far. We are seeing whether some of the funding that we have been able to achieve from the federal government for that program we might be able to use in a useful way in the Mid North to be able to support Peterborough services, but those services obviously have to be supervised by a GP. Whether there is a mix of services or support that can enable that to bolster services through Peterborough we are currently involved in exploring as well.

The good news is that there are now more regional GPs being trained. All of our GP training places across the state are full and Flinders University has now got regional doctors being trained as well, so there is a future pipeline there coming down the track.