Radio Interview - ABC SA Regional Drive with Narelle Graham

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC SA REGIONAL DRIVE
FRIDAY, 21 JANUARY 2022

SUBJECTS: GP shortages; rapid antigen tests.

NARELLE GRAHAM, HOST: There has been a recent survey done in the federal electorate of Grey. It's been done by Labor Senator for South Australia, Karen Grogan, and she ended up getting some new information on the availability of health care, including mental health care. There is actually still a chance to participate in this survey. Senator Karen Grogan, welcome to you. 

KAREN GROGAN, LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA: Thanks Narelle. and thanks for having me on. It's great to be able to try and encourage people to participate in this inquiry, which we hope will make a difference to GP access  

GRAHAM: What’s the catalyst for it? Because of lack of access to GPs has been around as a problem in regional areas for a long time. 

GROGAN: Look, it really has, but it's really ticking up. So, what a lot of people were seeing was – the stats for us in South Australia, for example, in August 2021, we’ve seen an 18 per cent increase in demand for GPs. And I think that's equally exacerbated by the COVID situation because people are telling me that they can't get to see the GP, not just because they can't get appointments, but because they can't get a test and the GPs won't see them without having had a COVID test first. So I think it's a combination of a range of things, but this is becoming more and more intense as an issue. 

GRAHAM: Okay, I see, so it's compounded by the lack of rapid antigen tests. Knowing these things and knowing what the problems are is one part, what do you then do with the information Senator? 

GROGAN: So what we did was give an inquiry up in the Senate and that's been running for a couple of months now. And the hearing that we're going to have for that Senate inquiry in Whyalla on the 1st of March is really amazing that we've got it in regional South Australia, and we've got a chance to put a focus on the issues in regional South Australia. So this inquiry will look at a whole range of information, there have been opened submissions of which have been 215 across Australia. But in addition to those which are predominantly by organisations and medical clinics, I wanted to bring to this inquiry, the voices and the experiences of the people, not just the GP side of things, but the reality of what that means to people on the ground in regional areas. And what the impact on their life is. 

GRAHAM: You want them to give you, scenarios that they have had to live with. That is Karen Grogan who is the Labor Senator for South Australia. And Rowan Ramsey is the current federal member for the seat of Grey, where this survey is focusing. Rowan Ramsey, good afternoon. 

ROWAN RAMSEY, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR GREY: Good afternoon Narelle. 

GRAHAM: Any surprises in what has been found so far, any new information in this inquiry for you? 

RAMSEY: No, I don’t think so. I think we will know, we’ve got a crisis, we got a chronic problem and I've known it for some time Narelle, I’ve spoken to you before. In fact we are heading for a situation on northern Eyre Peninsula at the moment where we’re going to have one practitioner to over 3000 members of the public and that is third world conditions, its clearly not good enough. And knowing, we know what the problems are. We can't get young doctors to commit to working in the country, and we know why they don’t want to commit to working in the country. Getting it fixed is really, if Karen's committee can come up with anything at all, let’s hope they come up with some solutions, but the if the solutions were easy, we would have adopted them long ago.  

I've got a list of all the different programs we have in place to entice doctors, to assist doctors to work in the country, over 20, and I haven’t stopped looking. Some of them paying up to $200,000 per head per year. But that's not enough, we are overtraining doctors in Australia, we’ve got more doctors than we need.  

And I think the fundamental issue here is the over-servicing in the city is actually causing the under-servicing in the country. That’s a distribution problem. It's not that hard for doctors to generate work. As long as doctors and young doctors can say “oh, well I can earn a good living in the city, why would I go to the country,” I think this problem is going to persist.  

We keep making changes and putting more incentives in the bag. But unless we either restrict those Medicare provider members in the city, and I know there was a lot of kickback about that and I’ve spoken about it before. Or else start to wind down Medicare payments in the city to make a differential between country 

and city service greater, I think we are going to have a problem.  

Having said that, Greg Hunt in Kimba, just over two years ago, having met with the Northern Eyre Peninsula Health Alliance and the $300,000 to them, for a study to come up with solutions. And we delivered that paper to Greg Hunt in the last week. It's gone down extremely well. I've had a number of conversations with senior politicians from both federal and state level to try and progress that along. I'm not prepared talk about what’s in that study because it’s for Greg Hunt. But I'm really hopeful that we're going to get some real traction on the ground and try something completely different, and see if we can sort of break this open. 

GRAHAM: Rowan thank you. Rowan Ramsey is the federal Liberal member for Grey We’ll just return to Labor Senator for South Australia, Karen Grogan. Are there any rabbits to be pulled out of hats do you think, Karen, by way of solutions? 

GROGAN: Yeah, I think there are.  

GRAHAM: Oh, what are they? 

GROGAN: I appreciate everything that Rowan Ramsey has said, but I think there's an issue there where just assuming that doctor's only want money is quite limited in the reality of what they see when they get out to a regional area. So things like childcare for female doctors, things like the expectation that they do work 24 7, if they have families or they have other commitments or that they just end up with burnout. I think there's a much more complex solution that needs to be crafted here. It's not just about money. 

GRAHAM: Karen, thank you. Karen Grogan there, the Labor Senator for South Australia, we also heard Rowan Ramsey.