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Family Doctors May Become Harder To Find (Read 252 times)
whiteknight
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Family Doctors May Become Harder To Find
Apr 30th, 2017 at 6:18pm
 
GPs despair as work pressures on the rise   Sad

Canberra Times
April 30 2017

Family doctors may become harder to find as higher patient expectations and lower financial returns dissuade medical students from becoming GPs.

A new report by the University of Melbourne has seen a drop in job satisfaction, work-life balance and private practice ownership since the Medicare freeze of 2013.   

The report released last week states Australian GPs face continuing and significant challenges due to decreasing Medicare revenue and more complex medical problems presented by patients.

The number of GPs is growing relatively slowly, and for every new GP there are now 10 new specialists it said.

"We work very hard and the expectations of patients is higher than ever before," said Dr Amanda Newman, a GP of 40 years' experience currently working in bayside Melbourne.

Dr Newman is one of 32,275 general practitioners around the country, a growing number of which are women. But those women are paid 25 per cent less than men.

"There's a financial disadvantage in spending longer with your patients and, on the whole, female GPs tend to spend longer than male GPs" she said.

Medicare currently compensates $37.05 to clinics for each consultation under 20 minutes.

Dr Bastian Seidel, chief of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, is worried the pay gap will deter young women in medicine.

"If you are a medical student and you're coming out of university with significant debt, you have to make a decision" he said.

Dr Seidel says financial security is a problem for men and women GPs alike.

According to the ANZ Melbourne Institute Health Sector Report, Medicare revenue for a GP working the equivalent of full-time hours has fallen in real terms since the Medicare freeze in 2013.   Sad

One doctor spoken to for this report said the drop in income was resulting in "dispirited" doctors.

"Financial security for GPs is a massive issue. On average, they are earning less than half than a hospital doctor," said Dr Seidel.

Dr Feidel, who works in Huonville, Tasmania, said his privately-run practice is virtually non-profit based on the percentage of concession holders, including pensioners and veterans in his area who all need to be bulk-billed.

"I've changed my income protection to 70 because I just know I'm going to work that long now," he said.

"Where do I get the income from considering I have to pay my staff well? Considering I have rent, electricity, materials and medical indemnity all going up?"

Another major shift reported in the University of Melbourne findings is the lower proportion of GPs who own their own practice, suggesting a rise in corporate ownership.

Australian General Practice Alliance vice-chair Sean Stevens believes red tape and government policy is responsible for the decline.   Sad

"It absolutely rings true for me there are more and more corporate clinics. The financial benefits of being a practice owner are being eroded," he said. "Red tape is driving a lot of GPs to distraction."

Director of the Hornsby-Brooklyn GP Unit Dr Elizabeth Marles said a further concerning element of the report was the emergence of more and more medical students opting for specialisation. It found that for every new GP there are 10 new specialists.​

"We do not need more specialists. What will happen if we have that is higher costs and more fragmented care.

"It means that for most people, the idea of a family doctor is becoming harder and harder to find," she said.   Sad

The University of Melbourne report analyses 10 years of the latest available public data about general practice as well as a custom-designed study - the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL) survey of doctors.
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whiteknight
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Re: Family Doctors May Become Harder To Find
Reply #1 - Apr 30th, 2017 at 6:21pm
 
We want the doctor that does the bulk-billing.   Sad
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Grappler Truth Teller Feller
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Re: Family Doctors May Become Harder To Find
Reply #2 - Apr 30th, 2017 at 10:35pm
 
Only to be expected under the combined pressures of expectations, 'entitlement', diminishing real returns for work and study, and the enveloping miasma of hopelessness about pretty much everything in a dying nation.

For far too long young kids have been told they can have it all and have everything - now as things get tighter and tighter, they are finding that they actually have to WORK for it - and there are no guarantees of a return on your work or your investment.

That is what we have been forced progressively to live under and with, under the extremely dark neo-conservative sky - and the kids are only just beginning to see it... but they still have a long way to go before they work out that their elders are not at fault - it is their government of two parties that is at fault, and has failed to provide for this nation from  the good times of the past, and to build on the sacrifice and hard work of the older generations.

Everyone these days wants a free ride and a sweet ride - in trying to get that, they will find that there are some hard lessons to be learned in life - namely that there are no free rides.
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“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
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