In April, 311 NSW GPs commenced training, with 44% of them outside metropolitan Sydney. In June, the government committed $2.7 million to help more GPs complete it.
Almost 300 NSW GPs can now diagnose, treat, and prescribe medication for ADHD, an initiative the government says will bring diagnostic services closer to patients’ homes.
From November, a further 300 GPs were expected to begin endorsed prescriber training, and locations for GP endorsed prescribers would be listed on the Healthdirect website, the NSW government announced today.
GPs would be supported by specialist psychiatrists and paediatricians through the Virtual Psychiatry Hub and Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, and would continue to refer to specialists and escalate care as required, according to NSW Health.
NSW Minister for Health Ryan Park said the first 300 GPs to complete endorsed prescriber training had been prioritised for regional and remote communities.
“This is a significant milestone which is adding capacity [to] our system and making it easier for people, many of them young families, to access the care they need, no matter where they live,” he said.
This follows the initial stage of reforms, which began in September 2025 and has since seen more than 1,675 GPs trained to write continuation scripts for ADHD medication.
According to the NSW government, nearly 1700 GPs signed up to become continuation prescribers, and more than 25,000 people accessed ADHD medications more easily, with more than 130,000 prescriptions dispensed.
RACGP NSW chair Dr Rebekah Hoffman said GPs were “perfectly placed” to manage the common condition and would benefit from the “holistic care and life interventions” GPs specialised in.
“The training program is a six-month training program for GPs in this space, and it comes alongside an agreement that GPs aren’t going to set up ADHD only clinics. They’ll remain as part of an accredited GP practice,” she said.
While research suggested the proportion of adults being treated for ADHD had increased more than sixfold since 2017, Dr Hoffman said the increase, particularly among women, was due to a change in understanding of the condition.
“We are making sure that we do diagnose and appropriately treat a generation of women who otherwise went undiagnosed. So, there absolutely will be an increase of diagnoses, and an increase of prescriptions, and the large majority of those will be absolutely appropriate,” she told The Medical Republic.
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Rural Doctors Association of NSW president Dr Rachel Christmas told TMR it was “fantastic to see” GPs able to assess, diagnose, and treat patients with ADHD.
“It’s a great initiative. It supports access for people in areas where access is limited,” she said, particularly in rural and remote communities where paediatricians were already fully booked.
“The things that get pushed back are the non-urgent, which are often ADHD assessments because they’re not life-threatening, but they are life-affecting,” she said.
However, she said she doubted there would be widespread uptake of GP training, except among those with a special interest or those who believed their community would benefit substantially.
“The training is quite arduous,” Dr Christmas said, which could pose an access barrier, particularly for GPs who were often “working overtime” in hospitals and in their practices, managing complex chronic diseases and acute medicine.
“But we know the training has to be rigorous, so it’s not that they shouldn’t do the training,” she said.
For rural and remote GPs, the decision to upskill could also mean becoming the only GP in their district, spanning three to six towns, who could diagnose and manage ADHD, Dr Christmas said.
This posed difficulties, she told TMR, given that wait times for routine appointments at her clinic were already three months.
“It is meant to be the usual GP managing diagnoses for their usual clientele, but I think that’s a bit naïve in rural areas where some people don’t have GPs, or their closest practice is not taking on new patients,” she said.
Dr Christmas said the initiative presented an opportunity to find better ways to reduce the load on general practice; for instance, paediatric-trained rural generalists could run clinics operating through public hospitals across NSW Health, under the supervision of a paediatric team.
In June, the NSW government announced a $1.5 million program to fund up to 25,000 bulk-billed ADHD assessments, with endorsed prescriber GPs to receive up to $600 per patient to cover administrative and pre-assessment tools.
GPs could apply to the Ministry of Health for the grant, separate from MBS item charges, and would save patients up to $1500 per year in out-of-pocket costs, according to the NSW government.
The program, part of an $11.7 million package, is due to start in early 2027.
The announcement followed the PBAC’s recommendations to broaden subsidised access to non-stimulant ADHD medicines, atomoxetine and guanfacine, for patients for whom stimulants are clinically inappropriate or experienced an inadequate treatment response.
