The AMA’s new Rural Health Issues Survey has echoed rural calls for more equitable funding.
A distinct lack of equitable funding for rural health has caused collateral damage to workforce sustainability and resource access, according to the 2025 AMA Rural Health Issues Survey Report.
The rural funding disparity has been ranked as the most critical priority by 90% of the survey respondents and has been the number one issue for GPs over the past nine years’ worth of surveys.
AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen said the funding gap was only getting more apparent over time.
“It is high time our governments stop placing rural and remote Australia in the too hard basket.” Dr McMullen said.
“It is pleasing to see rural healthcare feature in this election campaign, and we will ensure these issues don’t ever fall off the radar of the major parties,” she said.
This need was recently highlighted in the rural Queensland town of Cloncurry, where the solo resident GP recently made headlines for quitting.
It’s been a repeating pattern across rural Australia over the past several years, even as interest in rural generalism as a specialty climbs.
The AMA reiterated its formal suggestion of a revised health workforce agency to assist in providing equitable resource allocation for rural and regional general practice.
“This is something that we know health practitioners have been feeling the loss of Since 2014 when health workforce Australia was scrapped,” Dr McMullen told The Medical Republic.
“I think there’s this real data vacuum and strategy vacuum when it comes to health workforce planning and implementation.
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“We know that rural hospitals in particular are crying out for infrastructure spending and improvements to make sure that they’ve got appropriate infrastructure and equipment available to actually deliver care, and that really should also be achievable.”
In terms of current barriers in the way of funding for rural Australians, the AMA said the state and federal divide in funding allocations has often interfered with establishing effective funding strategy.
“We need better strategy, better coordination and integration, and more solutions to workforce shortages,” Dr McMullen told TMR.
“While our … hospitals are generally state run, there is a really significant portion of federal funding.”
“Particularly in rural and regional where we know there’s strong use of healthcare teams, but practices are limited in terms of how many allied health staff and nurses they can employ, and we think there needs to be a stronger focus on building those teams.”
“So particularly ahead of the election, our focus is on making sure that the Commonwealth Government pays its fair share.”
