Vol. 19 No. 33
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Wednesday, March 1, 2017
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Doctor appeal A
BY DEAN LAWSON
plea to the Federal Government to explore new strategies to encourage high-quality doctors to rural and regional areas including the Wimmera was the subject of a meeting in Canberra yesterday.
MOUTHFUL: Isaac Barnes, 2, digs into a pancake while perched on mum Belinda Elliott’s shoulders at Horsham’s May Park for Wimmera Uniting Care’s Pancake Day. Picture: PAUL CARRACHER
IN THIS ISSUE
Australian Editorial Award 2016
Regional medical-services advocate Amanda Wilson of Horsham outlined concerns and a need for greater government support in a meeting with Deputy Health Minister Dr David Gillespie. Mrs Wilson, who with husband Dr David Wilson is a part owner of Horsham’s Lister House Clinic and is also the clinic’s nurse manager and triage nurse, then attended a forum and dinner organised by Member for Mallee Andrew Broad. Mrs Wilson said she had made the effort to pay for the trip to Canberra to get her point across about the struggle regional medical clinics had in not only attracting, but keeping, high-quality doctors. “I’m in Canberra as pretty much a lay-person. But being married to a rural GP for 20 years and as a former representative for a pharmaceutical company visiting every rural surgery in western Victoria, I have pretty much lived it,” she said.
“We need to look at developing a different way to get high-quality doctors to commit to establishing themselves in the regions. “The way the whole system is set up is not promoting that enough. “I’m raising the issue from a community perspective because it directly affects communities and extends well beyond the simple provision of medical services. “I’m asking the Federal Government to reassess how it is currently structuring the system to ensure regional areas have adequate and appropriate doctor services. “The concern is that there are not enough incentives and open doors to encourage the doctors to not only come to the regions, but to stay.” Mrs Wilson’s trip to Canberra comes in the wake of six doctors leaving Lister House in Horsham over a six-week period in what she described as a ‘random timing cluster’ which had in turn applied pressure to medical services across Horsham district. The clinic previously had 13 doctors, who in normal circumstances might see as a group an average of 350 patients a day. She said the clinic was confronted with a similar circumstance about eight years ago. Continued page 3
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