HECS Scheme To Attract Health Professionals

The Territory budget announced yesterday ignores the very real problem of attracting nurses and doctors into the Territory, said opposition Health Minister, Dr Richard Lim.

The Country Liberal Party today announced its HECS Incentive Payment Scheme (HIPS), to set the record straight on how something real can be done to address our skills shortages in our health system.

“The 2006-07 Budget was a real opportunity for Clare Martin and her Labor Government to take action in respect to the recruiting needs of our health system,” Dr Lim said.

Traditional recruiting methods are not solving the problem and are increasingly expensive. The cost of recruiting each nurse to the NT health system sits somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000.

“Not only do we have to find these nurses and doctors, we also need to be able to keep them. Under current management, not only is this a real struggle, but it is getting worse as the morale of these frontline and ward workers is dropping.

“Recent data has shown that in Alice Springs there is a staff turnover rate of over 320% with hospital staff.

“As part of the budget process the Country Liberal Party has put its cards on the table in respect to dealing with this very real issue,” Dr Lim said.

The Country Liberal Party HIPS program involved paying the HECS bills for nurses and doctors. For every full year a nurse works in the Territory health system, after graduation, they will have one full year of their HECS debt paid.

“For nurses who stay 3 years, their HECS debt will be paid, and for doctors this will be 5 years.

“Not only do we need to entice local people to study at Charles Darwin University we need to keep them here after they have finished these studies. We want our students to learn here and live here.

“We also need to attract doctors and make it attractive for the students of other universities to come here to live and work.

“HIPS is not the only incentive, but it certainly is a carrot of decent weight,” Dr Lim said.

“The Health Minister should have delivered all the promised beds now, as the need is now. Importantly he also needed to deliver an incentive package to attract staff to service those beds, and on both counts this Health Minister has failed, again,” Dr Lim said.

2006-05-03