The chief executive of West Wimmera Health Service says the organisation is talking with a health provider to give the towns of Murtoa, Minyip and Rupanyup their own GP once again.
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Tristar Medical Group last week confirmed the three towns have been without a doctor since a senior GP who worked for the organisation in the area had relocated to Melbourne.
Ritchie Dodds said he hoped the service would have good news for the communities by the end of September.
"We are in talks at the moment with a potential replacement provider for Minyip, Murtoa and Rupanyup," he said.
"I won't say who, where or what at this stage - but essentially, it would be providing a similar model of care, where it would utilise our facilities to serve the local community.
"It would also have visiting rights for our Rupanyup nursing home, so they could go and see the aged care residents in there and the two acute hospital beds."
Mr Dodds said a Tristar doctor was still visiting the Rupanyup nursing home once a week.
The doctor is travelling from Horsham.
He said the health service provided allied health services such as district nursing and activity groups in both Murtoa and Minyip.
"We also offer volunteer driving services for people who might need help getting to a doctor's appointment in Horsham," he said.
"Tristar was basically leasing room space from us in each of those areas. From what we can tell, we are not expecting them to be back, given they took their equipment out in April."
Towns need to take lead role in promoting rural careers
Last week, director of clinical operations Anne Gardner said Tristar had been unable to recruit another GP to the three towns because of ongoing financial pressures such as the Medicare freeze.
Rural Doctors Association of Australia chief executive Peta Rutherford said the freeze had now been lifted.
"There's been no back pay or that type of thing, but we have seen government-subsidised items for general practice indexed twice since that happened, so hopefully we start to see some improvement there," she said.
Ms Rutherford said small Wimmera communities could follow examples from other areas of Victoria, and promote graduate doctors moving to their areas to practice.
"We're training a sufficient number of medical graduates to meet the needs of Australia," she said.
"It's about expanding training opportunities in these communities, but we see the best results when the community, medical practice and local health district work together to create an employment model which has a strong remuneration package and good access to professional development."
Ms Rutherford said Echuca, Mallacoota, Mount Beauty and Kerang were examples of communities that had attracted young doctors following public awareness campaigns.
"Young doctors know they're there," she said.
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