Beat Medical Blog

General Practitioners involved in Medicare rorts?

Posted by Beat Medical

The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that in a recent MJA article, Dr Tony Webber says that the 'dysfunctional' GP Management Plans system is open to rorting by practitioners across the board.

It is without doubt that incentive-based programs have an opportunity for fraud, overuse, or misuse. Although it is not acceptable, it is part of the price we pay for having a largely government funded health system.

One of the problems we see with this article is that there is little to describe what real checks and balances are in place to monitor the system, what training was provided to practitioners, and of course - what benefit has been provided to the healthcare consumers who have been beneficiaries of the system.

As recruiters, we work with employers and general practitioners every day to connect people with jobs across the Australasia region. The persistent issue we see is the government doing things to detract from the attractiveness of working as a doctor (particularly a GP) in high need areas.

Although it remains to be seen, the next step will undoubtedly be a government enquiry. There will be people hauled over the coals, and probably a mass requirement for GPs and other practitioners to provide reports to government bodies. Public confidence in medical practitioners may be decreased as a result of the negative media attention.

There ought to be more of a focus on developing the image of the medical profession, particularly those positions in the areas of the most need - and loosening the significant red tape and barriers to working and billing in the system.

Launching the locum pay calculator

Posted by Beat Medical

One of the great benefits of working as a locum doctor is higher pay, and the flexibility that gives you to work when and where you want.

We're very excited to release the first iteration of the medical locum pay calculator, a new feature on our website that adds another layer of interactivity to our online tools.

With this device, you can use the interactive sliders to work out how much you can make over a certain number of hours per week. You can also compare that to your current working hours and salary. The best part is that you can email yourself an hour-for-hour comparison of of your current income vs potential locum income.

Obviously, the rates are indicative only - and provide an example based on averages. It is also important to consider safe working hours when making any decision about locum work.

Click on the image below to access the locum pay calculator.....

Part 1 - Getting started as a medical professional contractor

Posted by Beat Medical

Finding locum jobs your way with Beat Medical

Posted by Beat Medical

As usual, we have been working like busy beavers behind the scene to make our online portal to work as user-friendly and interesting as possible.

As most of you know, we do not send out shift lists like many other agencies do - we think we can do better, and have a number of different options for you to keep track of the jobs we have on offer.

Job search

Visit our home page to search for jobs by specialty and location. From here you can apply for positions, refer a friend, and sign up for job alerts.

Locum jobs calendar

Now, through our newly revamped locum jobs calendar, you can access information about work in your specialty, at the time you would like to work. Simply select your area of interest, month, and year, and the system will display all advertised locum jobs in that period.

Job email alerts

Jobs are updated every day, so at the same time you can subscribe to daily email alerts - customised by your specialty, and location. 

Twitter feed

For the social media savvy, we have a real time twitter jobs feed, which displays jobs as they are added to our system. There is no way of being more up to date with available locum jobs. Go here to follow us.

Facebook

Keep track of feature jobs on our Facebook page, as well as the latest news, updates, and competitions.


Of course, if there is nothing on our website to suit your needs, get in contact with us on 1800 633 505 or send us an email with your request, and we will get back to you straight away.

Are locums less skilled mercenaries, who will never complete a training program?

Posted by Beat Medical

Things aren’t exactly as they seem, according to Beat Medical Director Shaun Hughston.


There are a few myths about locums which seem to have persisted, even though many - perhaps most- doctors work as a locum at some point in their career. Here are some of the most popular ones:

1. Locums are less skilled

This myth can be true, but mostly not. It really depends on the individual. The bulk of Beat Medical locums are specialty qualified, or senior practitioners with over 20 years of experience.

2. Locums are mercenaries

Guns for hire, who will work for the highest bidder?
Put this way, it sounds terribly sinister. Sure, a great benefit of locum work is that the market rate is higher than regular salaried employment. Simple economics dictate it: high demand - low supply = high price.

3. Doing locums discourages people from completing training programs

This is just not true. The workforce is changing, and many people use locum work as a gap year between junior years and training, or even as a break in the midst of a training program. With the average age of medical graduates increasing, they tend to enter the workforce with more responsibilities - and debt! Doing some locum work often helps supplement the meagre income of a registrar. And, there are some people who will simply never complete a training program. They are often the pillars that hold up the staffing of Emergency Departments around Australia.

Here is the reality of locums:

• Locums are needed because there has been insufficient health planning at government levels to ensure that healthcare facilities are adequately staffed. 
• Locums are needed because some colleges still have protectionist policies to limit the amount of trainees in their programs for less than positive reasons.
• The majority of locums aren’t necessarily doing it just for the money. When we ask people why they want to do locum work, the answers are more likely based around lifestyle, change in routine, adventure - and to develop a given skill set.

Unfortunately, there is a dodgy element amongst locums and locum agencies that has encouraged some negative perceptions by employers and the medical community about doctors who choose to work as locums for a short time, or even on a long term basis.

Next time you work with a locum, ask them what brought them there. You might be surprised.

Beat Medical offers locum jobs as as means to income, working holidays and adventures - have a look at our locum doctor vacancies to see what we have on offer.

Working as NZ based locum in Australia- Part 2

Posted by Beat Medical

So, you’re a NZ doctor looking to work in Australia?
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at some of the basics of working in Australia. There are some bureaucratic hoops to jump through, and they’re not all exactly straightforward.

To recap on the last article, there are two categories of registration you can apply for: Specialist and General. Forgeneral registration, you can apply directly to AHPRA (Medical Board), and work in a non-specialist position.
If you are a specialist, depending on your qualification/s, your application can take one of two paths- directly to AHPRA, or to the AMC for assessment.

For those holding a speciality which has a joint Australian/NZ College (such as ACEM), you can apply directly to AHPRA, the Australian Medical Registration body.

If you hold a speciality with a college which is solely NZ based (such as RNZCGP), you’re going to have to apply to the equivalent Australian college for recognition (i.e. the RACGP) via the Australian Medical Council (which is an intermediary body that forwards your application to the college). The AMC does not deal with medical registration, and is NOT the equivalent of the NZMC.

If you fall into this second category, you will need to apply to the AMC to have your qualifications assessed by the relevant college. In some cases, you will receive full recognition, in other cases you will receive partial recognition of your fellowship.

The role of the AMC is primarily to review documents, and pass them on to the College. Why can’t you apply directly to the College? Well, that’s just the way it is!

Once the AMC is happy with your documents (which need to be absolutely perfect), they will hand over to the college for assessment.

Assuming you are granted full recognition, you will be able to apply for Specialist Registration with AHPRA.
In either pathway, after being granted medical registration, in most cases you will be required to apply for a provider number. This enables you to bill as a private practitioner, request pathology, x-ray, etc., and the prescriber number you are granted will enable you to prescribe. Whilst you need a new provider number for each location you work at, your prescriber number is the same, wherever you go.

A few tips from us about the process:
-make sure you plan ahead, and give yourself lots of time to go through the process
-don’t book any work in Australia until your registration is approved
-when you’re having documents certified, make sure it is by the right person - and get more copies than you think you need
-and the most important: supply exactly the documentation requested on the relevant forms. You’re dealing with a government bureaucracy, so it needs to be exact!

There are a couple of things you can do if you want to get through the process a bit easier.

The first is: avoid it altogether! We offer work in a number of other places such as Solomon Islands, and East Timor where you can work with your NZ registration.

The second is to call or email us to discuss your situation. We can go through the process in more detail with you, and manage it every step of the way for you. We have taken loads of doctors through mutual recognition processes, and know many of the loopholes and tricks of the system.

There are some other considerations, particularly with regard to GPs, so do get in touch to discuss your individual requirements.

Call us on +61 2 4254 1004 to talk about your options in working in Australia as a NZ based locum.

Here are some links which you may find useful in the process:

AHPRA (Medical Registration)
Australian Medical Council
Medicare Australia

Bonus referral incentive - earn a $700 referral incentive - only in June!

Posted by Beat Medical

Only for June 2011, we are offering a $700 referral incentive if you refer someone between 1st - 30th June 2011.

This is an extra $200 on top of our usual $500 incentive!

Make June the month to refer.... look at your address book now to see who you could refer!

Read more about this special offer, and the conditions here.

Crossing the Tasman - NZ doctors locuming in Australia - what you need to know (Part 1)

Posted by Beat Medical

Sure, we don't have the All Blacks, or Keas, or as many glaciers as you - but we do have some fantastic locum work, paying loads, in interesting places. Before you quit your job, sell the house, divorce the wife (or husband), there are a few things you need to know about working in Australia.

Beat Medical are a medical recruitment and locum agency based in Wollongong, Australia.

Every year, we have a steady stream of doctors from NZ doing locum work in Australia, and other locations in the region. Some come for the pay, others for the climate, and some for exposure to clinical work that they may not be able to access at home.

With the introduction of national Aussie medical registration 2010, it is now easier for NZ locums to work across Australia.

Generally, much of the locum work is outside of capital cities - as that is where the need tends to be. Pay ranges from around $1500 per day for GPs to between $2500-$3000 per day for physicians, anaesthetists, emergency docs, surgeons, and other specialties. More often than not, employers will cover return flights from NZ, as well as accommodation and a vehicle.

Before you book work, there are a few things you need to do. 

1. The first is to confirm your right to work. You need to hold NZ or Australian Citizenship, or a valid Australian visa in order to work here. NZ permanent residents do not have the right to work in Australia. 

2. The second step is applying for mutual recognition of medical registration. This is where it gets a little more complex. There are essentially two categories of medical registration you can apply for. The first is General, the second is Specialist. 

To be eligible for general registration, you need to have full registration in NZ. This category only enables you to work in a general, non-specialist position here. 

To apply for specialist registration, you must hold a medical speciality recognised in Australia or NZ. 

For those holding a speciality which has a joint Australian/NZ College (such as ACEM), you can apply directly to AHPRA, the Australian Medical Registration body. 

If you hold a speciality with a college which is solely NZ based (such as RNZCGP), you’re going to have to apply to the equivalent Australian college for recognition (i.e. the RACGP) via the Australian Medical Council (which is an intermediary body that forwards your application to the college). The AMC does not deal with medical registration, and is NOT the equivalent of the NZMC.

Have a look at this flowchart for a breakdown of the process*

This may sound ridiculous, and complex  - and honestly, in some ways it is. Beat Medical can help you through the process, from start to finish. Although the process is bureaucratic, we’re the experts at making it go as painlessly as possible. With current locum possibilities and rates in Australia, it’s well worth it.

The next part of this series will focus on the how - what you need to do to get registered in Australia ASAP. 

In the meantime, if you are an NZ doctor interested in working in Australia, call us on +61 2 5454 1004 (we can call you right back) or email recruitment@beatmedical.com to talk about your options.

*Big fat waiver - The timeframes we have suggested for each state of the process are indicative only. Dealing with government organisations, we can sometimes only guess what the timeframe will be. Sometimes it will be more, sometimes less. The key message is: don't sell the farm until your registration is approved!

Joining the discussion on social media in healthcare

Posted by Beat Medical

As reported in this latest post in Croakey social media may be seen to be struggling as a media of choice in healthcare - with a number of barriers to adopting it as a productive tool.

As an integral part of our marketing strategy to recruit doctors around Australia and overseas, we are developing our social media capacity to encompass a a twitter feed dedicated to news, and another feed specifically for job listings. We are also adapting our strategy to ensure it is appropriate for different age groups in our market – with our Facebook page aimed at a different demographic to our twitter feeds.

The goal of our social media strategy is to keep our current and potential candidates and clients informed about developments in medical recruitment, provide informative articles, and to provide a means to have a quick and easy way to look at job listings the moment they are added to our database.

One of the great advantages of social media over email and plain websites in recruitment is the ability for users to share the information with others. As long as healthcare organisations, particularly the public variety, are encumbered by old-school communications thinking, they will be left behind in the medical recruitment market.

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.