AN 18-month search has failed to find a replacement for outgoing Buninyong doctor Terrence Gibson, UFS chief executive officer Lynne McLennan said.
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The UFS Medical Centre at Buninyong closed on Thursday.
The St John of God Pathology at the medical centre has also closed.
The reclassification of Ballarat from an area with a workforce shortage had shrunk the pool of candidates, Ms McLennan.
“Dr Terry Gibson is retiring after a very long and excellent career of service to the Ballarat community - he’s worked for UFS for six years but prior to that he was in general practice in Gillies Street (Wendouree),” she said.
“He has already deferred his retirement once but he’s ready to hang up his stethoscope.”
Dr Gibson, who is now in his 70s, worked in Ballarat for almost 20 years.
All Dr Gibson’s patients have been taken on by another doctor.
Ballarat has previously been classified by the Commonwealth Department of Health as having a workforce shortage after GP numbers reached crisis levels several years ago.
This allowed the recruitment of overseas doctors, which is now restricted with the reclassification, and boosted GP numbers in the region, Ms McLennan said.
Ms McLelland said Ballarat no longer had a GP shortage but was struggling to find doctors under the reclassification.
“Ballarat as a whole is not short of GPs but we can’t replace a GP who’s retiring because we’ve been unable to attract an Australian trained doctor,” Ms McLennan said.
“We still have a significant percentage of doctors who are getting close to retirement age so it’s still an issue for Ballarat, that we still need to be able to replace doctors who want to retire.
“The problem with that is Ballarat is not classified as a workforce shortage area so we’re not able to recruit an overseas trained doctor, we’re only able to recruit an Australian trained doctor or an overseas trained doctor who has been in Australia 10 years.”
Ms McLennan said the freezing of the Medicare rebate – which is now in place until 2020 – has been a “major incentive” for GPs to work in regional and rural areas.
The freeze means GPs will receive the same rebate in 2020 as in 2014.
“There is still a big issue in the medical workforce that there are not enough Australian trained doctors who want to work as GP and want to work outside a major city,” Ms McLennan said.
“There’s not a shortage, there’s a maldistribution and that’s due to a failure of government policy for many years.”