$13.7 Million to Support Our Isolated Health Workers

Australia’s remote rural health workforce will receive additional training, support and professional services, thanks to a $13.7 million grant to CRANAplus from the Federal Government. CRANAplus is a member-based national organisation that provides health professionals and their families working in remote communities with training, support and professional services that are relevant and appropriate to their practices.Minister for Rural Health, Senator Bridget McKenzie, said the $13.7 million over three years would enable CRANAplus to continue its work addressing the barriers to recruiting and retaining health professionals in remote and isolated parts of Australia."This investment will help to ensure more than 1500 health professionals in remote Australia are properly supported to meet the unique challenges faced by those working in isolated practices," Minister McKenzie said. "The grant allows CRANAplus to continue supporting our rural and remote health professionals and ensure Australians living in our most geographically isolated regions can access high quality, professional healthcare services. "Remote communities often do not have local hospitals or general practitioners. Healthcare services are typically provided by Remote Area Nurses and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers, supported by visiting medical and allied health professionals." "Member-based training programs like CRANAplus are vital to attracting, maintaining and enabling the careers of remote healthcare workers.""Supporting their work is part of this Government’s continued commitment and investment in our healthcare workforce to deliver equality of healthcare for all Australians, no matter where they live," she said. CRANAplus Chief Executive Officer, Christopher Cliffe, said people living in remote parts of the country had less access to the sorts of health services most Australians took for granted."If you live, work or are travelling in remote Australia and become acutely unwell or have an accident, you are unlikely to have a local hospital or private general practitioner within ‘cooee’," Mr Cliffe said."The first health professional you’ll see is probably going to be a Remote Area Nurse, who will provide your treatment or stabilise you for evacuation to the nearest hospital."Thanks to this grant, we will be able to continue supporting health professionals such as Remote Area Nurses to ensure they are available where and when people in remote parts of the country need them most," he said. The Coalition Government is absolutely committed to ensuring all Australians have access to a first-class health system.Part of this is the Stronger Rural Health Strategy - a transformational policy to build a sustainable, high-quality health workforce that is distributed across regional Australia. This Stronger Rural Health Strategy will deliver approximately 3000 additional specialist GPs for rural Australia, more than 3000 additional nurses in rural general practice and hundreds of additional allied health professionals in rural Australia over 10 years.The Stronger Rural Health Strategy will also enable a stronger role for nurses and allied health professionals in the delivery of more multidisciplinary, team-based models of primary healthcare in rural and regional Australia. MEDIA: Alex Hall 0407 743 752