David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to draw the attention of the House to an innovative model of medical care which I had the pleasure of opening in Clare last week. The Clare Medical Centre is a $2.2 million development in terms of infrastructure and, whilst I am pleased that the Australian government was able to contribute just under $200,000 to that, through the Rural Private Access Program and the Spencer Gulf Rural Health School, it is a sign of the commitment by Dr James McLennan and his team that they were prepared to raise and underwrite the capital to build this facility.

Whilst the facility is good—it provides a model for rural health care that I think should be taken note of around the country—it is really worth telling this parliament about because the proposal provides sustainability, not only for the medical workforce but also for the community. To take the community’s perspective, without a viable medical workforce it is hard to attract young people to come and work in a community in a regional town and it is impossible to keep a hospital going. In country areas the local GPs are also the doctors who provide the emergency and procedural services at the hospital, and they look after things like childbirth. But there is not a focus there to attract visiting specialists, so you tend to get a drift away from the town.

Importantly, this model also means that there is sustainability for the doctors not only in Clare but also in surrounding towns. Many small towns have a population large enough to need more than one doctor but not large enough to sustain two doctors. That means a solo doctor working in one of those towns has no opportunity for professional development or leave, and it is increasingly difficult to get a locum to relieve them. The Clare Medical Centre has now managed to provide both an outreach service in terms of a subagency and an outreach service that is cooperating and working with the solo practices in surrounding regional towns such that those doctors know that they will have consistent and quality relief on a regular basis, which makes both their lifestyle and their own ability to access professional development sustainable. That means that the community in that town is sustainable. I commend the model that James and his team have put together as well as the work that he and Steve Holmes—another doctor in Clare, who is the South Australian President of the Rural Doctors Association of Australia—have done at a national level in advocating for regional communities and regional health care and the changes that we need to implement from a federal government perspective to make sure that we have a sustainable and suitable rural medical workforce into the future.

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