Page 5225 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 27 October 2010
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In 2008, the division and ACT Health commenced a nationwide advertising campaign showcasing the lifestyle benefits of living and working in Canberra as a GP, which also included a call to action to potential applicants to investigate GP employment opportunities in Canberra. In 2009, this campaign was expanded to include a direct mail-out to some 4,000 GPs in inner Sydney and Melbourne locations and to target overseas locations, including New Zealand and the United Kingdom. 2010 has seen continued advertising nationally and internationally, including a joint partnership arrangement with the live in Canberra team to advertise in the British Medical Journal. GP job vacancy information will continue to be circulated at a number of national employment expos through 2010.
In addition, we have also announced our $12 million package over four years to support and grow our GP workforce. This package, which received funding on 1 July 2009, has five components: the GP scholarships, the GP teaching incentive payments, the ACT GP development fund, the ACT GP aged day service and the prevocational general practice placement program. The status of these initiatives is that, under the bonded scholarship scheme, one scholarship has been awarded to date and we are currently consulting around the criteria with the ANU Medical School to consider the finding of a survey they did around how better to target the scholarship funds.
The teaching incentive payments program has been successfully implemented, and payments to GP teachers are continuing. And this is specifically to acknowledge the role that they play when they take students into their practice. Every third appointment has to be blacked out so that they can talk through with the student doctor what had just occurred. That has a financial impact on their business in terms of the number of patients they are able to see. So the government is compensating them for that by providing that exposure for students into general practice.
In regard to the GP development fund, funding has recently been awarded for round 2. That means almost $1 million of that has been allocated. The West Belconnen Health Co-op received an additional $45,000, if my memory serves me correctly, under one of those rounds of funding.
The GP aged day service will provide assistance for people requiring acute assessment and management in the community, who are housebound or in a residential aged care facility, with a GP service when the patient’s usual general practice is not able to provide care in a suitable time frame. The Division of General Practice will commence the service in the first half of 2011.
The PGPP program continues to support the three current places. This number will increase in 2011, when there will be new commonwealth-supported places allocated to the ACT.
In addition to the work just mentioned, the ACT GP task force was established and has been working to investigate options around innovations for improving access to primary healthcare and did provide a report back to the Assembly in late 2009.
The reason I have outlined that as part of this motion today is to show that the government is working very closely with key stakeholders, mainly through the
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