The College has provided its submission to the Commonwealth Senate Inquiry into general practice and related primary health services in outer metropolitan, rural and remote areas. The College will also seek to provide spoken testimony to the Inquiry. Our thanks to the many members that provided feedback and assisted in this. 

ACRRM’s submission included the following key points: 

Australia’s rural healthcare services are at a crisis point. This situation is the legacy of actions by all levels of government over many years.  Not only is rural people’s healthcare underfunded and the value proposition of rural practice poor, but many rural doctors have lost faith in the overarching policy sector and its inclination for supporting rural and remote practice.  

With the right policy settings and institutional will, ACRRM’s vision for thriving rural health services have never been more attainable.  Rural communities are strongly positioned to flourish. Buoyed by the opportunities to work remotely and better housing affordability, there is strong and growing interest in sea changes and tree changes.      

Health policy solutions and approaches should include the following:

• Rebuild the value proposition of rural general practice. Action needs to be taken to redirect health funding toward primary care and stem growing workforce subspecialisation. This should involve increased funding and a more diverse range of funding sources for rural general practice, reducing business administration and compliance, and addressing the disincentives to rural training.
• Grow the Rural Generalist workforce as a rural healthcare solution. Recognition is needed that ‘primary care’ in rural/remote community contexts requires a distinctive definition which recognises the need for primary care providers to address access to essential care services that in cities would be considered the domain of secondary and tertiary care, and the workforce that can meet all these needs should be supported.
• Coordinate tiers of government to support rural services and ensure points of accountability for rural service failures. This involves setting acceptable minimum standards of healthcare access and proactively upholding these for all Australians wherever they live, and, taking a nationally coordinated approach to ensuring high-level commitments convert to ground-level resourcing.
• Building strong, resilient health services within rural communities. Whole of system recognition of the importance, and prioritising of funding options that build strong, sustainable, health resources and services within rural and remote communities, and enabling bespoke solutions which reflect the needs of the community.  

The full submission will be available on the Inquiry website in the near future. 

For further enquiries please feel welcome to contact the policy team at policy@acrrm.org.au.