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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-09-23 Daily Xml
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Rural Health Workforce

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:52): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Health and Wellbeing a question about the critical shortage of doctors in regional South Australia.

Leave granted.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: The Rural Doctors Association of South Australia recently released a survey of the state's rural doctors, which painted a disturbing picture of an emerging medical crisis confronting regional South Australia. The survey shows a critical shortage of doctors threatening the future of hospital and GP services.

This included 79 per cent of respondents revealing there are long-term vacancies for doctors in their community or that they are experiencing difficulties in recruiting doctors, 77 per cent reporting the number of doctors is near or already below critical mass in their areas and 59 per cent revealing they have been asked to help out colleagues in other locations or to provide backfill—further proof the SA rural doctor workforce is under significant pressure.

According to the RDASA, that association and the AMA SA have been engaging with the government over several months to develop a long-term reform package to support rural GP visiting medical officers. My question to the minister is:

1. What is the state government doing to improve hospital and GP services in regional South Australia, particularly in the face of the impact caused by the COVID pandemic?

2. How do you address the concerns by the RDASA and its members, the highly trained and skilled doctors who provide a critical service to our regional communities?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:54): I thank the honourable member for his question. The training, the recruitment, the funding of GP services is fundamentally a responsibility of the commonwealth government, but this government has always worked in partnership with the commonwealth in this area because we appreciate not only are GPs an important part of the country hospital workforce that we rely on so heavily but also are key to comprehensive, integrated services in our rural communities.

So even though it is primarily an area of commonwealth responsibility, the Marshall Liberal team, from opposition, committed to a $20 million four-year program to develop and implement a rural health workforce plan. Because of the challenges the honourable member refers to, key to that plan has been our commitment to develop the rural medical workforce. The Rural Medical Workforce Plan of this government was publicly released in December 2019.

A key strategy from the Rural Medical Workforce Plan is the development of a rural generalist pathway. I might hasten to add that the implementation of a rural generalist pathway has been a key advocacy goal of the Rural Doctors Association of South Australia for many years, so I am delighted that as Minister for Health and Wellbeing I am overseeing the delivery of the rural generalist pathway. There are two training networks designed for rural generalist trainees that have been established: one in the Upper North and one in the Limestone Coast, each with six GPs.

The government is also delighted that we have been able to expand training opportunities, including not only supporting training within the country regions but also giving metropolitan-based students an opportunity to taste rural practice. Not only is that helpful in terms of them perhaps seeing the special attributes of rural service but also, even if they do continue to be metropolitan-based health professionals, they might better understand the needs of country clients and be better able to coordinate the services between country and city.

In this training year, 2021, for example, we have doubled the number of metropolitan interns completing a rural general practice rotation, which is now 40. New for 2020, we have 15 metropolitan interns completing rural emergency rotations, 12 full-time rural postgraduates (PGY2s), which is up from four in 2020, and specifically in relation to rural GP registrars, we have 13 rural GP registrars completing their advanced skills training, which is up from five in 2020.

We certainly will continue to work with the Rural Doctors Association of South Australia, The Australian Medical Association of South Australia, the Rural Doctors Workforce Agency, GPEx and a whole series of stakeholders because it is only in partnership and with the support of the commonwealth government that we can make sure that the rural communities continue to have the health workforce they need into the future.

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