Thoughts on Super Clinics.

An open letter to Mr. Rudd and Ms. Roxon, from a GP at the coal-face.

Dear Mr. Rudd and Ms. Roxon,

I would like to make the following comments in regard to the Super Clinics which you have offered as a solution to the GP shortage.

1. Unless there is a net increase in the total number of GPs, this simply represents people-moving.

2. These Super Clinics are apparently to be staffed by the large number of GPs that you 'hope’ will result from the increased number of medical students currently attending our universities.

(i) Assuming that this increased cohort does eventuate, it will not be for nearly a decade. Do you have any strategies for our survival in the meanwhile?

(ii) One quarter of the current Year 1 students at the University of Queensland School of Medicine are overseas students, who will not be allowed to stay in the country after they graduate.

(iii) Of the remaining 303 Australian first-year students, assuming that they all complete their course, is it not a fantasy that a large number will become GPs given that:

(a) it is acknowledged that the popularity of the general practice as a career choice has been declining world-wide for years.

(b) this has been reflected in a decreasing number of applicants for each general practice training place for a number of years. We understand that in the late 1990’s there were three applicants per place, compared to 1.1 applicants per place in 2005.

(c) there are said to be sufficient training places in specialist colleges that every student could access one of these, making it theoretically possible that there could be no applicants at all for the general practice progam.

To build a concept of Super Clinics based on what can only be called optimism of the highest order can surely not qualify as a strategy, can it?

3. The Super Clinics are apparently going to attract these mythical graduates on account of the state-of-the art facilities that they will offer. This sort of statement, Mr. Rudd and Ms Roxon, is, quite frankly, an insult to future and current practitioners.

4. The Super Clinics are to be subsidised by governement. Will not this represent unfair competition to GPs who have struggled to maintain their community practices for years? I do not know if it is unconstitutional. I do not know if it breaches the Trade Practices Act. I do know that it is unfair.

5. And finally, in your reply to our letters regarding the local problem you described the planned Super Clinic concept. As, by your own definition, Super Clinics will be set up in Districts of Workforce Shortage, and, by your own definition, this area (Stones Corner and Greenslopes) is not a District of Workforce Shortage, can you please explain how this will help solve the local area problem?

Yours sincerely,

Dr Janet Clarkson,

Logan Road General Practice.

UPDATE, 27 March, 2008

Proposal to pay incentives to doctors to work at Super Clinics; read the Medical Observer Article.