In other news, the Department of Health has discovered that people have to know about a program in order for the program to work.
This year’s bumper crop of GP registrars will soon be able to start accessing their $30,000 salary incentive payment – but it will likely be some time before the new study and parental leave provisions come home to roost.
GP registrars who begin their community-based training from this semester onward will begin receiving the salary incentive in instalments of up to $5000 per month for the time it takes to complete the first training term.
The incentive is pro-rata; registrars who are working part time will receive less than their full-time peers.
GP registrars at all training stages are also now eligible for up to five days of study leave and up to 20 calendar weeks of paid parental leave.
All three incentive payments are federal government initiatives and use federal government money; the practice is not expected to foot the cost directly.
From the GP supervisor end, General Practice Supervision Australia chair Dr Candice Baker said the introduction of the incentives had been smooth sailing thus far.
“The number of applicants into the training system [this semester] is certainly very positive, and I’m assuming it has something to do with … these new incentives,” she told The Medical Republic.
“But how this all plays out on the ground is really yet to be fully appreciated.
“The thing that we’re watching, from a GPSA point of view, is how is this going to impact the small business of general practice?”
Given it is only a few weeks into the training term, the study and parental leave provisions have not yet been stress-tested.
Dr Baker said she expected the pressure points would emerge closer to the mid-year RACGP examinations.
“I think the real impact for practices is going to arise when registrars step away from the workforce to take that parental [or study] leave,” she said.
“Those temporary gaps that pop up in service capacity may actually add a little bit of pressure.
“If you’re setting up a business model for general practice where you think you’re going to have a registrar for 12 months, and all of a sudden they’re not there, that could very much impact your business model and how that looks.
“Feedback has been minimal so far, but that’s not surprising. As this becomes more commonly utilised, we’ll start to see some of these teething problems pop up.”
Related
The new set of payments aren’t the only workforce incentives for GP registrars; since 2022, doctors who live and work in MM3-7 regions and provide general practice-type services for at least 24 hours per week can apply to have their student debt reduced.
Depending on the length of their relevant degree, how rural they work and how long they work rurally, early-career GPs or GP registrars can apply to have their HELP debts reduced by 50% or 100%.
Only doctors who have been AHPRA registered for three years can apply.
A new review of the program, however, found that its chief issue is that very few people actually know about it.
In fact, the most common way that program participants found out about the scheme was through word-of-mouth.
The review recommended a comprehensive awareness campaign, should the scheme continue, as well as removing the three-year registration criteria.
“Several stakeholders raised issues with the three-year delay, with one observing that ‘those early years are when practitioners are trying to get the right experience for fellowship pathways and may already have settled elsewhere,’ and that the program is thus ‘influencing decisions too late’,” the review said.
“Stakeholders also stressed the benefit of earlier exposure to rural and remote practice, noting that exposure in PGY1 (postgraduate year 1) or PGY2 (postgraduate year 2) is far more influential in shaping long-term intentions.”
