Why is this useful for rural and remote people?

The Australian Medicare system is a fee for service model. Because of this, there is an incentive for doctors and allied health professionals to locate their practices in major cities that have large and concentrated populations where they can generate the most income. Under the Australian Medicare model, GPs generally get more money if they do a lot of short consultations for minor conditions, and less money for providing a smaller number of longer consultations for people with chronic and complex conditions. As a result, the model discourages GPs and allied health practitioners from providing care to people that are older and sicker who are concentrated in rural and remote towns or Residential Aged Care Facilities. Medicare has been a major reason why we have seen an exodus of GPs from rural and remote communities, and treating people in Residential Aged Care Facilities. This study generally supports the argument that a mix of fee-for-service funding, and funding for health practices based on patient need and complexity, helps to improve access to primary care and reduce avoidable hospitalisations. In Australia, a similar model is used to fund Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOS) which has given these organisations additional funding to recruit doctors and offer more comprehensive and integrated team-based care. The evidence suggests that extending the same blended funding model to all rural and remote practices would have a positive impact on patient outcomes, and improve the ability of practices to build health care teams that are better equipped to provide the type of health care services that keep people healthier and out of hospital in rural and remote towns. This is important for advocacy efforts by rural and remote people who are arguing for better funding models to encourage more GPs into rural and remote communities, and to enable them to build health care teams that can provide care that is more appropriate to rural and remote populations. It also helps to explain why rural medical workforce programs have struggled, despite billions of dollars of investment, to deliver doctors to rural areas because the funding models do not make it financially worthwhile for doctors who have been trained for rural practice to work rurally.