Horsham's Lister House Medical Clinic points to Medicare, incentives and advertising as methods to recruit doctors

Lister House has seen a number of doctors depart the clinic in recent months.

The clinic’s practice manager Rob Phillips said there were a number of factors behind high medical staff turnovers in rural and regional areas.

“At the moment we have a large turnover and we have lost a number of doctors,” Mr Phillips said.

“We are trying desperately to attract doctors to the country but it has become a fairly tough job.

“Any level of turnover is not good. If we lose one or six GPs it’s not good for the area.” 

“One of the concerns that we have is that doctors don’t realise the benefits of living in the country,” he said.

“This is what we have got to try to convince them, that the lifestyle is, we think, better in the country; better for raising children and families.” 

“The facilities are probably equal to those in the city, but we have got to change the mindset.”

The Medicare rebate paid to GPs for seeing a bulk-billed patient has been frozen at about $37 since 2014.

Rural and city doctors have complained that freezing the rates despite inflation has pressured clinics to either increase out-of-pocket costs or set aside less time per patient.

Late last year, then federal Health Minister Sussan Ley was urged by an industry working group to consider increasing the Medicare payments for rural doctors.

Mr Phillips said that approach might help.

“The medicare rebate is the same across the board for vocationally registered doctors; if it was higher in the country that might give an incentive for GPs to practice in the country,” he said.

Mr Phillips also called on the state and federal governments to increase the financial incentives they provide to doctors for working in rural and remote areas.

“There are already incentive but they probably aren’t enough,” he said.

“There needs to be a larger incentive to attract doctors to the county.”

The Australian Medical Association has resumed its campaign to lift the Medicare freeze and urged the new Health Minister, Greg Hunt, to take action.

After being sworn in last month, Mr Hunt said he and the federal government had a rock-solid commitment to the future of Medicare.

Member for Mallee Andrew Broad has previously said the Medicare freeze cannot last forever.