The Parliamentary Friends of General Practice was launched on 21 November 2022, in response to mounting evidence that general practice in Australia is under threat.
The initiative comes after the RACGP held a General Practice Crisis Summit in Canberra in October, following almost half (48%) of all GPs surveyed for the College’s General Practice: Health of the Nation 2022 report stating that it was financially unsustainable for them to continue working in the role.
The Parliamentary Friends of General Practice will be Co-Chaired by National Party Senator Susan McDonald, Labor MP Dr Gordon Reid, and Independent MP Dr Sophie Scamps, and is a bipartisan group where politicians, industry leaders and experts can discuss potential solutions to the multiple issues facing general practice.
“GPs are the cornerstone of our health system however general practice is currently in crisis. There is a desperate shortage of GPs across the country and if general practice collapses, our whole health system could be imperilled,” Dr Scamps said.
“As a former GP, I’ll be using my voice in Parliament to ensure we build a robust primary healthcare system that supports the health of all Australians.”
“As a doctor working in the emergency department, I have seen firsthand, why general practice is vital for our community, it is essential to ensure high quality, patient-centred care,” Dr Reid added.
“General practice is the key component to ensure that the health system is proactive, rather than reactive.”
The launch also gave 27 GPs from across Australia the opportunity to voice their concerns about the ailing state of primary care at a breakfast meeting with politicians, including Hon Mark Butler MP, Minister for Health and Aged Care, and RACGP President Adj. Professor Karen Price said the GPs sent a strong message to Australia’s leaders.
“We need change, and we need it now: government after government have taken funding away from general practice patients, and because of these actions, right across Australia people are missing out on the care they need, and they are suffering,” Professor Price explained.
“The current model of healthcare funding in our country is extremely lopsided – more Australians visit a GP every year than any other service in our entire health system, but funding for general practice patients is less than 8% of total government health spending.
“On the other hand, if we were to invest more in preventative care for Australians, and measures to keep people well in the community supported by their GP, we will have a healthier population, higher productivity, and lower spending on expensive hospital care – it just makes sense.”
The catalyst, General Practice: Health of the Nation 2022, was an online survey undertaken by The Navigators in close collaboration with the RACGP, which ran from 19 April 2022 to 15 May 2022, and covered a wide range of demographics reflective of the GP community.
Each year, RACGP members select a topic of interest for the report, and this year’s theme, the ‘sustainability of general practice,’ attracted 3,219 respondents from across Australia, with 10% of the cohort comprised of West Australian GPs.
The report highlighted several concerning themes, such as unsustainable workload, burnout, mounting administrative burden and inadequate remuneration, and presented evidence of these pressures “expediting the forecasted general practice shortage, as more GPs, including younger GPs, reduce their hours and express their intent to retire early from general practice.”
Twenty-five per cent of GPs reported they intend to retire within the next five years; only 48% believed they will be practising in 10 years; and the proportion of GPs who still intend to be practising in 10 years’ time has decreased among those aged under 45 years from around 90% in 2017 to below 80% in 2022.
Almost three in four GPs (73%) reported they have experienced feelings of burnout over the past 12 months, and for the first time since the Health of the Nation survey began, ‘managing workload’ has overtaken ‘managing income’ as the highest-ranked challenge reported by the profession.
As a result, younger GPs also appeared to be reducing their volume, moving away from full-time with a shift towards working less than 40 hours a week, and in 2022 more than 40% of the GP FTE workforce was aged 55 years or older.
Similarly, this year also saw a shift in the likelihood of GPs recommending general practice as a career choice, with fewer than half of GPs now indicating that they would recommend the profession as a career to their junior colleagues.
At the same time, interest in the profession from medical students continued to diminish significantly, with only 13.8% indicating general practice as their preferred medical specialty in 2022, down from 16.1% in 2021, and consequently, Australia continued to be heavily reliant on doctors who received their initial medical qualification overseas, with these GPs making up over half (52%) of the workforce.
“The number of GPs entering the Australian General Practice Training (AGPT) Program saw a significant decline from 2017 to 2020, causing concern regarding the future of the profession,” the authors concluded.
“While 2021 and 2022 have seen an increase in the number of GPs entering training, this has not yet flowed through to increased number of GPs entering the profession.”