Australian medical groups are calling for state and federal governments to boost funding in rural areas after a report found that rural Australians were shortchanged to the tune of $6.5 billion (US$4.3 billion) in health funding.
“Poor health service access is a disincentive to live in rural areas, and poorer health outcomes limit the potential of rural industries by reducing the workforce’s efficiency through increased absenteeism and decreased productivity,” the report that was released on June 23 said.
“Rural industries such as farming, mining, and tourism make up disproportionately large (compared to population share) portion of Australia’s economic output.”
The report shows that from 2010 to 2021, government health funding for urban areas did not match that received by rural regions. For example, private hospital expenditure increased from $13.7 billion to $49.5 billion (a 260 percent increase) in urban areas during the 11-year period, while rural and regional expenditure increased from $7.1 billion to $19.4 billion (a 175 percent increase) during the same period.
Additionally, Medicare expenditure increased 64 percent from $10.8 billion to $17.7 billion for city patients, compared to an expenditure of $3.9 billion to $6.3 billion for urban patients during the same period.
Leading Medical Groups Call for Funding Boost
Susanne Tegen, CEO of the National Rural Health Alliance (NRHA), has called for the funding of a “place-based multidisciplinary model of primary health care” that is tailored to the needs of local communities.“Communities need access to health care in their localities. To achieve this, we urge the government to add to existing city-based and hybrid (city/rural) training with a flipped model of exceptional rural medical and allied training, including nurse training. This would make training in cities the exception and enable students living rurally to train in their own communities,” Tegen said.
The NRHA also wants a national rural health strategy to streamline complicated and varied funding initiatives.
“The 48 national members of the [NRHA] alliance—all passionate about rural Australia—eagerly await the much-needed direction of funds to redesign primary health care in rural Australia at the grassroots,” Tegen said.
“The data show that over seven million people in communities across Australia, which makes up almost a third of our total population, experience a greater burden from illness and early death, and this is in part due to inadequate healthcare funding,” Clements said.
“People living in the bush are at a huge disadvantage due to poorer circumstances in terms of the social and economic determinants of health, higher costs of access and delivery of all healthcare and lack of service availability.”
Clements said that locums who work remotely need to be offered higher salaries and housing.
He added that governments should reduce regulations that prevent international medical graduates from working in Australia.
“This is particularly important for rural and remote areas, which disproportionately rely on overseas doctors,” he said.
Clements said that running a practice in rural and remote Australia is not viable and has urged the governments to boost funding for this sector.
“If someone living outside of a major city experiences poor health, they are more likely to end up in hospital because they simply can’t access general practice care,” he said.
“This is a lose-lose situation for all concerned because the patient ends up in a hospital bed with a health problem that could and should have been managed in a GP’s office, and the strain on the hospital sector grows and grows.”
The report also acknowledged the difficulty in pinpointing rural and urban disparities due to Australia’s complex public and private systems and that it did not cover all government expenditures.
