Newcastle GP Access After Hours to close its doors due rising costs and lack of funding

BY JARROD MELMETH

A bulk-billed GP service in Newcastle used by around 15,000 people across the Hunter will cease operations at the end of the year.

The Calvary Mater Hospital at Waratah will close its GP Access After Hours service on December 24 due to rising operational costs and stagnant funding.

Other after hours service across the region will also have reduced hours from January 2022. These include at Belmont and Toronto where services on weekends will be halved, as well as services at Maitland and John Hunter Hospitals reduced by one hour each day.

There are concerns about the closure of the Calvary Mater service and the reduction in hours of other services across the region, as there are very limited local bulk-billing GP services. 

Newcastle MP Sharon Claydon says the reduction is services will only place more pressure on a system already under the pump.

"We do not want people turning up to tertiary health settings, such as hospitals and emergency departments, when they could be well treated and much better treated in more appropriate settings.

"This is something that our doctors in Newcastle and the Hunter knew 20 years ago when they set up this service," Ms Claydon said.

Scone practice "best in NSW"

BY GARY-JON LYSAGHT

The Scone Medical Practice has been named the best general practice in NSW by the Primary Health Network.

Practice Manager Ross Higham says the practice offers a range of services for rural communities.
[Picture: Scone Advocate]

The 82-year-old facility was recognised based on its high retention rate and the wide range of services it provides to rural communities.

“The practice also arranges for visiting specialists in a variety of areas … to provide services on site at the practice’s purpose built medical facility,” PHN CEO Richard Nankervis said.

The ‘best in NSW’ Award recognises the practice’s commitment to the health and wellbeing of its patients, PHN said in a statement.

Practice Manager Ross Higham said the facility aims to give a comprehensive experience for patients.

“We try to give it widest available services we can.  We have a physiotherapist on site, we have a psychologist on site,” he said.

“We have visiting dietitians, visiting endocrinologists, and a cardio specialist as well.”

He said that while regional hospitals at Tamworth, Newcastle and Maitland all provided comprehensive services, “the closest one to us is an hour-and-a-half away”.

“We’re trying to cut down the distance that people have to travel as a priority,” he said.

The award comes as regional Australia continues to battle a shortage of doctors in regional Australia, with a bulk of GPs consolidated in metropolitan areas.

In 2015, the then-Abbott government introduced new incentives to get doctors into small regional towns, and out of larger centres like Cairns and Townsville.

Part of the plan was to increase the paid incentive from $12,000 and $23,000 for doctors working in towns of less than 5,000 people.

"It makes more sense to use that money to attract doctors to where the greatest shortages are - small rural and remote communities, not big regional cities," Rural Health minister Fiona Nash said at the time.

"This means bigger incentive payments will go to doctors who choose to work in the areas of greatest need."

However, speaking with the ABC late last year, Rural Doctors Association of Australia president Dr Ewen McPhee said incentives put in place so far haven't helped.

"Even with the best of intentions over the past 20 years, we still haven't fixed the rural workforce shortage problem," he said.

However, Mr Higham said he's often seen a link between where a training doctor has come from and where they end up practising.

"We generally find that people with rural backgrounds tend to go to rural practices because they understand the community," he said.

"We also have some doctors from Sydney who come out here as well and find the experience very rewarding, both medically as well as fitting into the local community."

The Scone medical practice opened in March 1934 by Dr W.O Pye, the great-great grandson of British convicts. 

Roundtable Discussion to Boost Regional GPs

BY GARY-JON LYSAGHT

The federal government has held a Rural Health Stakeholder Roundtable in Canberra yesterday, with ways to boost GPs in the Hunter and regional Australia high on the priority list.

Lyne MP, David Gillespie

The government has begun steps to introduce a National Rural Generalist Pathway, which will help improve access to training for doctors in the regions.

It comes after new figures were released, showing Australia will have a surplus of 7-thousand doctors by 2030.

Assistant Rural Health minister David Gillespie says doctors need access to frontline training because they never stop learning.

“You spend more time doing that training after you graduate than you do at university,” he says.

“At the moment, the preponderance of that happens in metropolitan centres and we [the Turnbull Government] want that post-graduate training to be expanded and rolled out in more rural and regional centres.”

Dr Gillespie says the Pathway will help keep doctors in the regions when they finish their study, rather than seeing them flock to the capitals.

The roundtable also looked at establishing a National Rural Health Commissioner to work with frontline GPs and all levels of government to get the best outcome for regional Australia.

David Gillespie says they’ll have a lot on their plate.

“He or she will liaise with universities, with local health districts, with regional training organisations to make sure we get a certain slice of the medical workforce directed, as much as we can, towards rural and regional Australia,” he says.

The roundtable walked away with a need to decentralise the medical workforce in Australia

 and get it out into the regions.

“We need to keep working on medical workforce distribution across the country because we have plenty of medical professionals coming through university,” Dr Gillespie says.

“We want to put policies of action in place to make sure rural and regional Australia – and remote Australia – get more [of the] medical workforce.

“Mental health, dental workforce, Indigenous workforce, pharmacy workforce.  We’re not just focusing on getting doctors distributed everywhere; we want the whole suite.”

Rural Mental Health Services Recieves a Boost

The State Government has committed $19 million to the University of Newcastle's Center for Rural and remote Mental Health Centre.

Funding will be delivered over the next five years and spent on improving the services and supporting rural and regional residents when it comes to their mental health.

"We will be looking at how we work with Government health services and the primary health networks ... in order to create a much more relevant mental health service for people in remote regions" says the Center's Trevor Hazell.

In these remote regions, the local GP acts as the mental health practitioner as opposed to urban areas like Newcastle and the Hunter, where specialised care is available.

"You may not be able to access a clinical psychologist, and thier are barries ... because of  fear that everyone in the town would know" says Mr Hazell

"In a metropolitan area, you can access them anonymously."

Mr Hazell adds that weather plays a significant role in the mental health of farmers, with the fear of whether or not their will be rain before harvest.

"Their continuously looking towards a possible good future, but also a possible uncertain future.  And this effects not just those of produce the agriculture, it affects the workers."

Image courtesy of Matthias Ripp, via Flickr (LINK).