Primary care is a critical provision for all Australians, but the sector is now reaching boiling point.
Professor Karen Price is the President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
She says the situation for G-Ps is becoming untenable.
"We've had decades of disinvestment and you know removal of funding effectively through Medicare freezes. We’ve got a failing pipeline, we’ve got a failing business model and we’ve got increased burdens with aged care, chronic disease, mental health, a pandemic and you know, it’s just really blown the place up so we’re really at a crisis and we really need to have some clear actions.”
One of the issues is the significant drop in the number of medical graduates choosing general practice.
“It used to be around 50% of the medical graduating class would enter General Practice and now the intention to enter General Practice is around 15.2-16%. They’re graduating older and with more burdens of debt now and they’re looking at the relative rewards of the workforce and they’re saying ‘well no, I’m going to stay in hospital-based specialties’ which is really going to contribute to increased costs for all Australians if we keep going down that path.”
She says the continued funding cuts to Medicare is being felt more directly within lower socio-economic communities.
