With 4,000 patients on his records, Hussain Anjum knows the stress of being the only GP in a regional town.
He has taken out loans and used his own money to try to attract other practitioners, to no avail.
Dr Anjum is among the chorus of regional and rural doctors calling on whichever party wins the federal election to unfreeze the Medicare rebate to incentivise and attract more GPs to communities struggling with a doctor shortage.
In 2019, Dr Anjum opened a private practice at Moore Park Beach, north of Bundaberg, where there was previously no doctor.
Three years later, there are 4,000 patients on its records — exceeding the population of the beachside town by more than a thousand.
Patient Darren Prouse said he drove over an hour to see Dr Anjum because the surgery closest to his house in Gin Gin was a revolving door of doctors and it was difficult to get regular appointments.
"There's always a new doctor. The doctors only last for about six months. So you can't have the constant treatment that I require," Mr Prouse said.
"We've always had patients complaining that all the doctors come in for six months to a year and then they leave. They don't stay because they don't have any incentive," Dr Anjum said.
"If they can do more versatile work and make more income with less travelling time and more amenities available 10 minutes from a CBD, why would they come here?"
Freeze remains
The Coalition has promised $146 million in funding for rural healthcare, including expanding training in remote communities.
Labor has pledged to spend $250 million per year over the next three years on "strengthening Medicare".
Neither major party has committed to increasing the patient rebate for GP services, which has been frozen since 2014, initially introduced as a temporary budget savings measure by the then-Labor government.
Dr Anjum said the level of payment a GP received through Medicare was insulting.
"A fully trained university specialist doctor to bulk bill a patient, after all the taxes and all the wages, gets $17.10 per patient," he said.
The president of the Rural Doctors Association of Queensland (RDAQ), Michael Reinke, said increasing the rebate would encourage more doctors into general practice.
"There has been a reduction in general practice trainees over a number of years now … the Medicare freeze has contributed to this," Dr Reinke, also a rural generalist in Bowen in north Queensland, said.
"This is well overdue. What was meant to be a temporary measure has now been in place for nearly a decade."
Convincing doctors to stay
Dr Anjum suggested tax incentives for doctors working in regional areas could attract more to communities.
"I feel a bit let down by the fact that the government is unable to see the need of the hour and do some critical on-ground changes," he said.
Dr Anjum said recruiting doctors for his own practice had come at a financial cost to him.
"I've had to take loans out. I have had to sell my cars and put money in to get people incentivised," he said.
"That is to make them come here and say, 'look, if you sign on with us and work for two years, we'll give you X amount of money to cover your movement'."
He said enticing doctors to relocate to the regions was the first step in convincing them to stay, just as he had.
"This community made me who I am, they accepted me when I was a young immigrant doctor with an expecting wife, that's where I started my family," he said.
"This town, this country, gave me the opportunity, the experiences, the confidence, the skills, the knowledge, and then the certifications required to be a specialist physician with sub specialties.
