Working with independent private general practices

With increasing challenges to recruiting separate GPs and hospital workforces, rural communities are best served when healthcare professionals work together to effectively meet community needs, reduce the burden of disease and assure the sustainability of local services.

Integrated general practice models

Integrated general practice models are collaborations with GPs, enabling hospital doctors to undertake granted private practice when they are not needed at the hospital, and engaging local rural GPs to work in the hospital to share their expertise and support an on-call roster.

These solutions can deliver improved continuity of care for patients and give doctors greater variety and job satisfaction.

Hospital and health services (HHSs) can explore working arrangements with local rural GPs as part-time senior medical officers or visiting medical officers.

The Medical Practitioner with Private Practice (MPPP) (PDF 409 kB) model has operated in Queensland for more than 50 years supporting rural hospitals with low occupancy that only required limited services from a medical practitioner. In these communities, doctors provide defined daily duties at the hospital and are otherwise free to conduct their own independent private general practice.

Alternatively, salaried hospital doctors and rural generalists in Queensland can undertake private practice by agreement with their HHS using granted private practice agreements (PDF 163 kB) to bolster the primary care workforce. These agreements acknowledge the practitioner’s responsibilities to their private patients as distinct to their public system responsibilities.

HHSs can use a private practice placement agreement (PDF 204 kB) or a general practice service agreement (PDF 310 kB) to document the arrangements for their doctors to work from an independent private practice. The agreements consider each party’s responsibilities, training and qualification standards, billing arrangements and service fees, and joint oversight of primary care performance and quality.

Transition plans

A transition plan should be developed in situations where a private practice intends to close without being able to sell or transfer the practice as a going concern. This will ensure patient care is carefully considered and provides the scope for a HHS to prepare to operate a general practice if needed. See our succession checklist (DOCX 31 kB) for the factors to consider.