The rural college didn’t post record-breaking profits like the RACGP, but it didn’t do too poorly either.
The smaller of Australia’s two specialist GP colleges posted an $820,000 surplus this year, as its training program goes from strength to strength.
ACRRM’s annual report follows a particularly successful year for the college, with training places on its rural generalist training program overfilled by 90% and places on its GP training pathway oversubscribed by 10%.
As well as a high intake of new registrars, ACRRM also awarded a record number of fellowships this year, totalling 180 for the 2024 calendar year.
While the $820,000 profit falls short compared to last financial year’s surplus of $2,380,000, it is significantly larger than what ACRRM was recording in the years immediately leading up to the pandemic.
In 2018, for instance, it only scraped $250,000 in surplus.
Over the last 18 months, ACRRM opened new offices in Rockhampton, Adelaide, Wodonga, Perth, Bunbury and Darwin.
Long-time CEO Marita Cowie said there were plans to establish even more offices into the future.
There’s reason to believe that 2025 will see continued growth in training numbers, with the expected recognition of rural generalism as a distinct specialty.
“At the simplest level, it gives a doctor looking at what they might like to do into the future something to aim towards, where it has previously been slightly nebulous,” ACRRM president Dr Rod Martin told The Medical Republic.
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“It’s a solid recognition piece [and] a legislated endpoint for our educational processes that have only been doing for 20-odd years.”
With specialty recognition comes financial recognition, and a joint ACRRM-RDAA project exploring the potential scope for inclusion of rural generalist MBS items is expected before the year is out.
“[Remuneration to recognised rural generalists is] a challenging piece of work … there’s lots of financial modelling and lots of assessments of the existing Medicare system,” Dr Martin said.
“And all of this is happening at a time where there’s increasing calls for changes in how all forms of primary care – and in our case, primary care plus rural generalist care – [should be remunerated].”
