“Fast medicine is like fast food. Not good in the long run. “If we continue on the path we are going to see, we will see an increase in the rates of diabetes, depression, heart disease and obesity,” he said.
Hanson said GPs need better access to parental leave and more family physician academics who teach medical students at university: “Family doctors don’t teach medical students, so they don’t imagine your future career as one. “
“We now have more chronic diseases, such as diabetes, and when they are not monitored regularly, people end up in emergency rooms.”
Lizz Reay, CEO of Wentworth Healthcare
He said the government’s cuts to Medicare funding for GPs to interpret ECGs, which measure whether someone has a heart attack or a life-threatening irregular heartbeat, were especially worrying.
University of Melbourne research published last year found that non-GPs earn almost twice as much as GPs. GPs ’incomes rose 10.7 percent (from $ 189,574 to $ 209,938) during the decade to 2018, while specialists rose 21.5 percent (from $ 338,554 to $ 411,575) during the same period. time.
Mount Druitt doctor Kean-Seng Lim said young medical learners are choosing other specialized fields because of “lower pay compared to other medical specialties … and because general practice also goes wrong during the training of the medical school and the hospital, “Lim said.
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Wentworth Healthcare CEO Lizz Reay said she had seen a steady decline in the number of GPs in Penrith and the Blue Mountains over the past five years, areas that now have two-week waiting lists.
“If we don’t understand why people go to general practice, to begin with, we will never solve the problem. We will continue to stir doctors from region to region.”
He said Medicare rates “have been stagnant for so long” and, after COVID-19, “we’re just constantly hearing that GPs are completely burned out.”
“We now have more chronic diseases, such as diabetes, and when they are not monitored regularly, people end up in emergency rooms.”
Mark Burdack, CEO of Rural and Remote Medical, said some 7,000 people across Walgett County, northwest NSW, have seen cuts to primary health care in recent weeks after practices closed. at Lightning Ridge and Walgett.
“The feeling of inertia in tackling this problem is amazing. We have thousands of health policy makers, but we don’t seem to be able to drive it in a direction that responds with the sense of urgency we need,” Burdack said.
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A spokesman for the federal health department said that while COVID-19 affected the arrival of international doctors, the overall number of doctors has not decreased significantly.
“The Australian population increased by 1.3% between 2019 and 2020. In comparison, the number of registered doctors increased by 2.4% and the number of employed doctors increased by 3.5%.”
“Australia’s general practice training program provides more than $ 200 million in funding each year to support high-quality training for GP registrars to become specialist GPs,” he said. the spokesman.
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