CAMPBELL Town Health and Community Centre and an estimated 1500 patients in the surrounding district will lose access to a local general practitioner from January.
Longford Medical Practice, which has provided GPs to Campbell Town for the past two years since the retirement of Dr Merle Gray, will only service Longford and Perth going forward due to an ongoing GP shortage and ever-increasing workloads.
There are 26 beds in the regional hospital that will require an attending doctor plus patients from local rural areas such as Royal George, Rossarden, Ross, Avoca, Epping and Tunbridge who will be forced to travel to Launceston or Hobart to find a GP after January 6.
Doctors from the Longford Medical Practice have been working on rotation, someone different each day, travelling to Campbell Town to take appointments and do the hospital rounds. For those willing to travel to Longford for an appointment, the wait is expected to blow out to months.
Campbell Town Health and Community Centre board chair David Gatenby said the situation had reached crisis point. “The doctor to patient ratio should be around one to 800 but based our our municipality’s population is more like one to 2000, no wonder they can’t keep up with demand,” he said.
“The Federal Government will have to find a doctor for the hospital and could well be a locum. “But Tasmania is 120 doctors and GPs short and unfortunately that’s affecting mainly rural communities – the option to travel is not always there, especially for older people.”
One of four principals at the Longford Medical Centre, Dr Cameron Hayes, said it was bitterly disappointing to close the Campbell Town service, after stepping in to fill a void two years. “But we can’t staff that service when we can’t even staff the main practice,” he said.