Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

Royal Australian College Of General Practitioners

The Royal Australian College Of General Practitioners is the professional body for General Practitioners in Australia.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners is responsible for maintaining standards for quality clinical practice, education and training, and research in Australian general practice. The RACGP has the largest general practitioner membership of any medical organisation in Australia, with the majority of Australia's general practitioners belonging to their professional college. Over 22,000 general practitioners are members of the RACGP Continuing Professional Development Program. The RACGP National Rural Faculty, representing more than 8000 members, has the largest rural general practitioner membership of any medical organisation in Australia. The RACGP publishes Australian Family Physician, Australia's main peer-reviewed academic medical journal for general practitioners.

Membership of the Continuing Professional Development Program should not be confused with fellowship of the college. In the absence of fellowship in any of the specialty colleges, a medical practitioner will typically obtain membership of the Continuing Professional Development Program in order to satisfy medical registration requirements with AHPRA, the national medical registration body.

Additionally, membership of the college is mandatory for any medical practitioners hoping to obtain fellowship of the college via any of the training pathways; as such, membership is non-negotiable for these practitioners.

Furthermore, approximately half of the vocationally registered general practitioners in Australia consist of "grandfathered" general practitioners who obtained unrestricted access to MBS Medicare Rebates in 1997 when provider number restriction legislation was enacted by virtue of their existing access to MBS rebates. These grandfathered GPs have not undertaken GP training, and critics argue that the imposition of training on new graduates is both unfair and unconstitutional.

Provider number restriction legislation enacted in 1997 by the new coalition government prevented new graduates from accessing Medicare rebates, on the basis of "oversupply" of medical graduates, and was to be a temporary measure with a sunset clause to take effect in 2000. GP training places were also reduced to only 400 per year to help address this alleged oversupply of general practitioners.

The sunset clause was removed in 1999, making the provider number restrictions permanent, and cementing the RACGP's role as the gatekeeper for new graduates entering primary care.

Critics have argued that this is a workforce measure which limits the supply of general practitioners, and therefore reduces federal government Medicare expenditure. This critique is supported by the 1996/7 budget policy papers indicating the large savings likely to result from the provider number restrictions in the following years.

Critics have argued that the RACGP has a vested interest in limiting access to fellowship, and international medical graduates in particular have argued that they are being used as cheap medical labour while they struggle to meet the RACGPs fellowship requirements. Arguments from the RACGP of "maintaining standards" must be contrasted with the fact that half of existing general practitioners were grandfathered and have never done GP training.

In 2002 The RACGP obtained around $5 million of dollars from the then federal minister for Health, Dr Wooldridge, for their new headquarters in Canberra. Dr Wooldridge announced his retirement from government shortly thereafter and his intention to take up a consultancy at the RACGP. Critics argued that this was unseemly and improper.

International and local medical graduates with clinical experience hoping to obtain RACGP fellowship have argued that RACGP fellowship pathways are expensive, fail to properly recognise their experience, and that appeal mechanisms lack transparency and are exorbitantly priced. The appeal fee is around five times the application fee.