General practice funding is in dire straits – but do we have the balls to solve it?

Judging by the plethora of articles appearing in the medical media of late, including AusDoc, our colleagues are starting to accept that general practice is far down s*** street and that Medicare is not going to fix our funding woes.

Old doctors are burnt out, young doctors have fled to other specialties and there is a large and jaundiced lump in the middle.

What more and more GPs — and even our learned colleges and associations — are realising, and stating publicly, is that bulk-billing practices are economically unviable and have been for years.

We all know practising six-minute medicine is soul destroying, not conducive to good medicine and incompatible with quality healthcare.