SA offers $750,000 salary to lure GP to Lameroo-Pinnaroo district

South Australia is so short of doctors that GPs are being offered an extraordinary $750,000 to move 240km outside of Adelaide.

The whopping salary, which is three times the average earned by GPs, is designed to lure a doctor to the Mallee district in the state’s east.

For the successful candidate there are also employer superannuation contributions, salary sacrifice and leave loading on top of the advertised salary range of $475,763 to $752,224 per annum.

The medic will be based out the towns of Lameroo and Pinnaroo, which are 40km apart. 

According to the Australian Tax Office non-specialist doctors get an average taxable income of $232,903 in 2019-20. 

Because the clinic is run by the state government there will be none of the overheads faced by doctors who have private practices.

The job includes running inpatient, outpatient and general practice services as well as supervising trainees and GP registrars.

Such is the shortage of doctors in regional and rural SA areas that $3000 has been offered to cover a single shift in hospitals. 

The Riverland Mallee Coorong Local Health Network said position was being advertised to fill a vacancy left by a long-serving GP.

‘We have already employed a part-time GP to partially fill the gap left by the departing GP and we look forward to attracting an additional GP to our region to increase the services available in the Southern Mallee district,’ a statement says.

‘The successful candidate can choose to be an employee on a salary, or work as a contractor and earn Medicare income and charge a gap.

‘While this is the first example in the region where a salaried GP may be placed in a general practice service, SA Health employs GPs in other locations including some medical staff at Riverland General Hospital.’

Rural areas of South Australia are experiencing a severe doctor shortage, with one regional health service offering $750,000 to move there 

The huge salary comes at a time when frustrated GPs have been speaking out about the failure of Medicare rebates to keep pace with growing costs forcing them to cut back on patient care.

GPs are being pressured in some clinics to only spend six minutes with each bulk-billing patient. 

‘Churn-and-burn medicine exists,’ Sydney GP Annie Marshall to the Sydney Morning Herald. 

‘The only way to get a patient out of your room within six minutes is to give them a piece of paper – for a scan, a blood test, or a referral. You cannot make a patient feel reassured that you’ve had a proper look, that they’ve been heard, in six minutes.’ 

Royal Australian College of GPs SA & NT chair Dr Zakaria Baig said medical students are moving away from general practice because of the pressure and lack of financial incentives compared to specialist disciplines.

‘They (medical students) have lost interest in general practice. There are multiple reasons for it,’ he said.

Medical students are turning up their noses at general practice because of its relatively poor recompence

‘(These include) the big discrepancy in remuneration for a GP and other specialists; while GPs are recognised as specialists, GPs are not paid at the same rate.

‘Young doctors are often in relationships, there are no work opportunities for their partners if they go rural … so they are not keen to go rural unless there are special incentives.

‘[There are also] limited schooling opportunities for children of rural GPs. Many move out to cities for this reason when their children grow up.’  

In SA’s mid-north region the only medical clinic in the town of Peterborough ceased operation in June.

This left the town’s population needing to make the 43km trek to Jamestown for medical care.