College president Adjunct Professor Karen Price abruptly announced the summit via Twitter.
Surprise! The RACGP will host a summit in Canberra in just over a week to address the general practice workforce crisis.
The RACGP summit, which college president Adjunct Professor Karen Price announced via Twitter, will see around 100 GPs and stakeholders converge on the capital.
While the announcement came somewhat out of the blue, Professor Price told The Medical Republic that the event had been in the works for months.
“We’re really concerned about what’s happening in general practice, and we know the federal government has got an appetite to look at this,” she said.
“We want to make sure that we’re presenting fully informed and evidence-based feedback to them.”
At the AMA conference last month, Health Minister Mark Butler said that the low number of medical graduates applying for general practice training was “the most terrifying statistic in health”.
The aim of the summit will be to produce a white paper addressing the big issues, including funding and, of course, workforce.
“We’re going to address some big issues and hopefully come up with some workable solutions,” Professor Price said.
“That’s what we’re going to be focused on – solutions, not more talk about how much of a crisis we’ve got.
“All of us in the room already know that there is a crisis … but we need to get some solutions on the table that are workable, and workable now.”
It’s an invite-only event with an aim to produce a policy paper; no politicians will be involved.
Attendees include University of Melbourne healthcare economist Professor Anthony Scott, along with representatives from ACRRM and the PHNs.
“We have specifically asked for international medical graduates to be there, for Indigenous doctors to be there and to make sure we’ve got as much of a gender balance as we can,” said Professor Price.
The General Practice Crisis Summit will be held on Wednesday, 5 October at Old Parliament House.
