The man leading Australia's billion-dollar attempts at workforce reform says the health system needs to "refocus" on generalist medicine, claiming specialisation has "gone too far".
Jim McGinty, chair of Health Workforce Australia, is due to hand to ministers the agency's report on workforce planning, including details on the specialists the country will require over the next 15 years.
Speaking at the AGPN conference in Melbourne last month, Mr McGinty said: "Specialisation has gone too far, driven by the professions and supported by employers … while at the opposite end, the capacity of GPs, generalists and support workers are not being sufficiently valued or managed."
He said there had been little success in national workforce reform -- fuelled by a lack of evidence around what worked.
But the Health Workforce Australia plan would focus on "rebalancing specialisation and generalism", particularly around rural generalist practice.
"We need a broader, and in the cases of general practice and medicine, a deeper scope of practice," Mr McGinty said.
Health Workforce Australia, which was handed a $1.6 billion budget over four years, has been tasked with developing policy on workforce innovation and reform, as well as workforce planning.
The report will attempt to list the number of training places each specialty needs at each step, as well as what Mr McGinty described as the "training pipeline" - students, interns and vocational trainees.
But speaking to Cardiology Update’s sister publication Australian Doctor after the speech, Mr McGinty, a former WA health minister, declined to comment on mechanisms to encourage the health system to embrace generalist practice, including the possibility of capping training places for some specialties.
He stressed there were serious concerns about the shortage of nurses to meet future health needs -- particularly in aged care. But he said doctor numbers were largely sufficient, with retention rates still high.
"The issue [for doctors] is about maldistribution," Mr McGinty said.