Our guest expert Peter has answered your question below, Michael.<\/p>\n
You’re spot on, and the data backs you up.<\/p>\n
People in rural areas get much less specialist care<\/b>, and the places with the least care of all are almost all in rural areas. Half of remote and very remote areas receive less than one specialist service per person a year. There’s nowhere in a major city with that little care.<\/p>\n
There are a couple of good ways to fix this.<\/p>\n
One is to train more specialists in rural areas, which makes them more likely to stay there<\/b> when they finish their training. Governments should set targets for rural training, and tie funding for training places to meeting those targets.<\/p>\n
Another solution is building up public clinics in the areas with the least care<\/b>. Today, the areas with the least private care don’t get more public care. That’s one big reason for the long waits in many rural areas. Governments should set a minimum level of care that every community can expect. Then areas with the least care should be the first to get more public appointments.<\/p>\n
New public clinics in rural areas might have to run a bit differently, for example using more telehealth. But the key is committing to a minimum level of care<\/b>, investing in more public appointments, and making sure they go to the communities that need them most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our guest expert Peter has answered your question below, Michael. You’re spot on, and the data backs you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[275],"tags":[4465,40689,18,135,475,474,7005,19,17,73864,167,12318,24245,87271,7932],"class_list":["post-677845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-access","tag-dental","tag-eire","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-hospitals","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-maternity","tag-mental-health","tag-policy","tag-private","tag-specialist","tag-your-say"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117233186816420908","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}