The Federal Government has announced $17.69 million in funding for a suite of projects aimed at boosting the healthcare workforce in regional and remote areas.

 

“There is no hiding from the fact that regional and rural communities have great needs in terms of health workforce recruitment and service provision,” Acting Minister for Health Mark Butler said.

 

The funding will be split between two programs, with $16.18 million to be spent on recruiting 287 nursing and allied staff through he country’s first nationally coordinated recruitment approach.

 

The recruitment program is being coordinated by Health Workforce Australia and will work with seven rural health workforce agencies across the country to source the 287 health professionals.

 

$1.5 million of the funding will be spent on eight projects that will focus on the roles of Rural Medical Generalists and Rural Dual trained Physicians, which have been proposed as an alternative to the “fly-in, fly-out” services currently used to deliver specialist care.

 

“The Rural Medical Generalist role will provide a bridge between the traditional role of non-procedural General Practitioners (GP) and the advanced skills of a consultant specialist,” Mr Butler said.

 

“The Rural Dual-trained Physician project will complement this work by increasing the number of physicians trained in both general medicine and an additional specialty to reflect local needs. 

 

“Both projects are innovative examples of health workforce reform and address our key aims of building capacity, boosting productivity and improving distribution of rural health professionals,” Mr Butler said.