A GP who helped her community through the Black Summer bushfires says she is struggling to find the money to maintain staff wages under the ‘slow financial bleed’ resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Kate Manderson says the rollout of the new MBS telehealth items, along with the Federal Government’s JobKeeper payments, are a lifeline that means she will not have to close services.

But she says revenue across her four practices in NSW has fallen 40% since the public was ordered to stay at home, with mass cancellations and a slump in face-to-face consults.

“About 30% of our consults are still face-to-face, quite a bit of which are flu vaccines. By mid-May, I think we will be down to about 10-20%,” she says.