Riverina health professionals raise serious concerns over 'prohibitive' rules to recruit new doctors

The Perrottet government this week announced it would spend $4.5 billion boosting the state's health workforce, with 40 per cent of the new staff going to rural areas.

Keith Fletcher, the CEO of Your Health medical centres in Griffith and Leeton, said the only way to achieve that target was to recruit medical professionals from overseas.

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However, he said the process of securing overseas doctors had become prohibitively expensive and time consuming.

"I think the issue with immigration has become extremely hard," Mr Fletcher said. "Rural Australia relies heavily on the immigration of overseas-trained doctors.

"The cost of getting these doctors through sponsorship has increased dramatically and that is now a barrier."

Mr Fletcher said the time it was taking for potential overseas candidates to be assessed through a pre-employment clinical interview process had blown out considerably.

"Once upon a time wait times for that took a couple of months, but unfortunately that has now blown out from anywhere between six and nine months," he said.

Rural Doctors Australia NSW doctors-in-training representative Marty Ryan said the premier's announcement of 7600 new health care jobs in the next 12 months will have to rely heavily on international recruitment.

"The processes involved in securing international recruits often take much longer than a year," Mr Ryan said.

"It doesn't seem that realistic on the surface."

Mr Perrottet said the recruitment drive would target doctors, nurses and midwives, paramedics, pathologists and scientific staff, pharmacists and allied health professionals.

"This record investment will help us care for health staff across the state, providing the respite and back-up they need," he said.

"It will also boost staff numbers in hospitals to deliver quality health care closer to home, ensuring better health outcomes and a brighter future for NSW families."

Mr Ryan said it will be a challenge to create 40 per cent of the new jobs in rural areas. "There are already a significant number of vacancies in rural health positions across the workforce, whether that be medical, nursing or allied health," he said. "So, they will have to fix the issues behind those vacancies first."

While Mr Fletcher agreed with the need for appropriate checks and balances when securing health professionals from overseas, he said it is now taking too long. "In the meantime, [rural] doctors are being left there having to cope," he said. "They also have to take on the supporting roles too and they are all prepared to do that.

"You then have the issue of immigration support. As an employer, you have to be able to take on the sponsorship of these doctors to Australia, which has blown out dramatically.

"You would think if we were recruiting health professionals, there would be some real advantages for Australia to support or invest in that sort of expertise, but it has become prohibitive."

Mr Fletcher said there are a number of things that could be done to improve the situation.

"These include supporting our own Australian-trained graduates and providing more support for international graduates," he said.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, federal Minister for Immigration Andrew Giles and the Department of Immigration were contacted.

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