Specialist doctor shortfall projected to widen

A shortfall of 12,812 full-time specialist doctors is projected by 2048 in Australia, new modelling released by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DoHDA) shows.
 
According to the analysis published this month, an undersupply of 6981 full-time specialists is predicted by 2033, which modelling suggests could widen to 12,812 by 2048.
 
That would represent a 9.7% shortfall in workforce needs, the authors of DoHDA’s Whole of Medical Workforce Supply and Demand Compendium Report wrote.
 
By that time, the total number of doctors is expected to reach 200,000, which is close to projected overall requirements due to an anticipated oversupply in the generalist medical workforce.
 
The statistics do not break down the projected specialist shortages into granular detail by discipline, meaning it is not clear to what extent the GP workforce is expected to account for the undersupply.
 
However, the RACGP’s workforce strategy, which was launched last year, put the GP shortfall at around 3620 full-time specialist GPs in 2025, with that also expected to grow significantly without intervention.
 
Noting DoHDA’s work to address the shortage, including with the expedited specialist pathway, the college strategy emphasised the need to increase training numbers.
 
‘If Australia seeks to achieve a sustainable home-grown general practice workforce over the medium to long term, the RACGP annual GP training numbers need to increase from 1350 to 1850 at a minimum over the next five years,’ it states.
 
‘A commitment to invest in growth over this period will go a long way to filling the projected shortfall.’
 
A record-breaking 1772 doctors began general practice training this year, with a landmark $751.3 million five-year GP training grant agreement with the Federal Government confirmed in February.
 
The DoHDA workforce report, however, warns ‘inequitable access is likely to remain a key issue’ due to specialist undersupply and ‘the geographic maldistribution of practitioners’.
 
It is an issue also raised by RACGP Vice President Dr Ramya Raman.
 
‘When we speak about workforce, we need to be considering maldistribution, the setting as well as the geography with the projected specialist undersupply,’ she told newsGP.
 
‘It’s not enough to know whether Australia has enough doctors.
 
‘We need to understand the communities, the distribution, the training pathways, the practice conditions.’
 
She points towards work underway for a new RACGP Expert Committee on workforce, details of which are likely to be confirmed next month.
 
‘The workforce committee now being established is an important opportunity to bring together the evidence, the lived realities of practices and the needs of patients, and also focus on not only producing numbers per se, but understanding what our workforce would want as well,’ she said.
 
The college’s strategy states it will seek Commonwealth collaboration to develop a joint workforce strategy ‘whose goal is the creation of a sustainable Australian trained general practice workforce that meets the nation’s needs’.
 
Reflecting on workforce changes over the past decades, the recent DoHDA report found the overall doctor headcount more than doubled from 2003–23, with 2.5 times more doctors graduating domestically.
 
It also says the number of international medical graduates (IMGs) tripled at the same time, rising from 21% to 34% of the total workforce, with the authors writing persistent gaps ‘have increasingly been met through international labour recruitment’.
 
They warn that current settings are unlikely to fix the issue, with a ‘growing bottleneck’ likely to affect those seeking to enter specialist training programs under existing conditions.  
 
‘Acknowledging that IMGs are and will remain [an] important part of the medical workforce, the National Medical Workforce Strategy 2021–31 identified high levels of IMG dependence as a risk,’ they wrote.
 
The report says the projections ‘highlight the issues in Australia’s medical workforce training pipeline and structure’, with current settings ‘unlikely to achieve self-sufficiency or fix the leaks in the pipeline (retention) due to limited career prospects’.
 
‘Fragmented stakeholder interests and workforce planning leads to gaps and distortions in the overall national workforce,’ it states.
 
‘Addressing these gaps requires a shared common goal and a concerted and collaborative effort by medical colleges, state and territory governments and the Federal Government to encourage and support medical graduates to pursue specialities in high demand, particularly in areas of workforce need and the right sectors.’
 
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