Beat Medical Blog

Western Australia considering options for medical workforce shortage

Posted by Beat Medical

The West Australian reported last week on the growing concern about workers from regional and rural Western Australia gravitating towards cities rather than settling in their home towns. 

The medical profession is no exception, with very attractive locum rates being offered in such areas to address the critical shortage of doctors in the bush. The article reports GP locum rates of $2000 per day to entice doctors to provide their services to isolated towns.

We agree with the opinion of Wendy Newman of the Wheatbelt Development Commission that: "There is some good health planning which looks at how to refocus and provide the right resources so that we can take the pressure off a 24/7 doctor and share the load around a range of communities, rather than have one doctor in one community model,".

Many of the locum GPs who work with our agency have jobs and homes in one town, but also provide much needed services to another. This model works perfectly, by sharing resources throughout several different locations. By working with an agency, our locums find that they can focus on the work at hand rather than some of the less exciting bureaucratic processes that sometimes come with working for a number of different employers.