The Future of Australia’s Rural Health Workforce

Lennon M, Suttie J

The medical workforce policy in Australia has over the last four to five decades under gone a “boom and bust” approach. In the late 1990’s there was a nationwide drought of doctors that affected everything from the suburbs of major cities but hit inland rural areas particularly hard. Since then the government have implemented several policy levers to grow the medical workforce.

Graduating medical student numbers have grown from 1,305 in 2001 to 3,547 in 2015

an increase of 171%. At the same time there are approximately 5,000 visas for international medical graduates (IMGs) being issued every year which has not changed significantly over the last decade. Medical migration provides a rapid way to fill areas of workforce demand and the 10 year Medicare moratorium has meant that IMGs now comprise 43% of all rural doctors. This enormous influx of doctors has meant that Australia now has more doctors per capita (3.6 per 1000 capita) than many similar OECD countries Denmark (3.5), UK (2.8)

and USA (2.5) indeed from 2008 – 2012 the number of practicing doctors grew by 16%

compared to a 7% overall population growth.

However despite this growth there were still only 230 doctors per 100,000 population in

remote areas compared with approximately 440 in cities. This poster explores the

complexities around current health workforce policies and possible problems generated

from a doctor oversupply.