DOCTORS REFORM SOCIETY

DRS

Media Release

Saturday, 11 August 2007

 

GP SHORTAGE IN CITIES AND COUNTRY THREATENS END TO GENERAL PRACTICE

 

 “Reports today of the disastrous shortage of GPs even in Sydney should be a wakeup call to the Federal Government,” said Dr Tim Woodruff, President, Doctors Reform Society. “Increasingly they have to wait weeks just to see a GP and this situation is reflected in other cities as well as GPs in many suburbs close their books because they just can’t cope.”

“We have a national shortage of GPs because of the Federal Government’s cost saving policies of the 1990s,” said Dr Woodruff. “They didn’t fund enough medical school places, and even their attempt to correct that bad policy will not fill the gap in the future”.

“In addition, their support for general practice is woeful, half hearted, muddled, full of red tape, and designed by default to decrease the attractiveness of general practice,” said Dr Woodruff.

“Where is the support for nurses in city general practices? Where is the financial support for the very capital intensive infrastructure for general practices in an age where integrated multidisciplinary health care centres are the way of the future?,” asked Dr Woodruff. “The Federal Government is leaving it to private enterprise to finance corporate controlled centres whose interest in patients is inevitably secondary to their profits.”

“Where is the Federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, when patients need him?”