Page 3303 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 August 2008

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(2) welcomes the commitment by the Canberra Liberals to:

(a) establish bulk-billing after hours clinics in south Tuggeranong, Gungahlin and west Belconnen;

(b) provide an incentive fund to encourage general practitioners (GPs) from interstate to relocate in the ACT;

(d) help young GPs into private practice through the establishment of a Young GP Entrepreneurs Fund

There is a worldwide shortage of healthcare professionals. This is the case in Australia too, and it is particularly bad in the ACT. As we heard in the Assembly inquiry last week, which was occasioned by the closure of the medical centre at Wanniassa, there are over 600 medical practitioners in the non-specialist category in the ACT, but this does not paint a true picture of the real situation.

As Mr Lowen from the ACT Division of General Practice pointed out, only 412 of these doctors are making Medicare claims and the rest are in other parts of the health system. Of this group of 412, not all are working full time, which is expressed as 10 3½-hour sessions a week. In fact, only 226 full-time equivalents exist. This gives us the real picture, and what this means in the national context is that the ACT has 66.8 full-time weighted equivalents per thousand compared with 86.1 full-time weighted per thousand. That is the real situation with which we are working. It compares poorly with New South Wales, for example, where there are 94.1 full-time equivalents per thousand. The shortfall of GPs is then around 60.

But there is also a concomitant problem, which is this: GPs are not distributed equally throughout the ACT. Outer suburban areas are suffering particularly from the chronic shortage of doctors. This is further compounded by a less than adequate public transport system to enable those people to get to a GP at the first opportunity.

We know that effective GP services are our front line for providing good preventative health care, care that is most likely to keep patients out of hospital in both the short term and the long term. The effective delivery of primary care is, therefore, not just a decision for private practitioners operating as businesses. It is crucial to have governments deal with chronic health problems and the acute care needs of the population.

At the pointy end of the public health system in the emergency departments and operating theatres of our hospitals, the Stanhope government have just sat back for the last seven years allowing the problems in delivery of primary care to fester and grow to the point where we see ourselves today.

The Canberra Liberals have been doing a great deal of work in this area. For example, we know that the people in Belconnen are particularly disadvantaged when it comes to being able to access a GP in the current situation. Residents say such things as

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