Blackwater residents react to GP clinic closure, pharmacy uncertainty
Proud Blackwater residents Karleigh Banks and Morgan Rothero are symbolic of the pressures patients face in rural and regional Queensland as healthcare services decline. Hear their stories.
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A rolling crisis in general practice medicine is crippling healthcare in rural Queensland and the convulsions have now swamped Blackwater.
The Central Queensland mining town is reeling from the closure of Blackwater Healthcare Centre, a GP clinic that served the community for more than 50 years.
For a brief window, the town’s only pharmacy was also shut but has since reopened.
Blackwater now has just one GP clinic and one pharmacy to service a population base of nearly 5000 people, as well as FIFO and DIDO workers.
The Blackwater Multipurpose Health Service also provides an emergency department and a range of health services.
Morgan Rothero, a 60-year-old resident of Blackwater of 12 years, said it wasn’t the recent closure of the Blackwater Healthcare Centre that affected him and his family so much as the confusion of operational hours of Pharmacy Essentials Blackwater that was the challenge.
“Well not so much the GP but the chemist has because I have got my 88-year-old mother-in-law living with us that depends on her medicine and if we can’t get her blister packs we are buggered,” Mr Rothero said.
“We have got to go to Emerald, which means another trip back to the doctors.
“A member of staff who works there (Pharmacy Essentials Blackwater) has been brilliant.
“They have looked after us and they always will.
“But it is just annoying not being able to walk in there and get something when you need it.
“Then you have got to rely on Woolworths or the trip to Emerald.”
Emerald is the only close option for Mr Rothero because he takes medicinal marijuana.
“I’m on medicinal marijuana of a night time,” he said.
“I have got to go to Emerald to get it because this bloke here won’t let him stock it, so there’s another $300 a script, plus travel, plus my time.
“I don’t work, yeah but fuel costs and all that.
“And I don’t know honestly, there’s a lot of old people in this town.
“I don’t know how they do it.
“Like you get on Facebook and they say ‘Is anybody going to Rocky?’ ‘Is anybody going to Emerald, so that you can pick up a script?’”
“A GP out here I know has been really good about it.
“I know they have really been pushing for it. But it is up to the owners to sort it out. They reckon they are getting on top of it but only time will see.
“I have gone through all of this (arm surgery), five operations coming down here (Blackwater), you have got to rely on what Woolworths have got...Pads and all that when it was bleeding all the time.”
Mr Rothero had his treatments done in Blackwater at North Blackwater General Practice by the GP he spoke of.
“They (the doctor in question) can’t do enough for you (the patient) but they can only do so much too,” he said.
“With the other doctor’s surgery going, I’d hate to think what the wait lists are going to be to even get in there, which is a shame.
“And that comes down to who voted the government in. I know I didn’t but yeah that’s what it comes down to.
“I was here in 1975 and it used to be a good town, people looked after each other, simple reason being if you wanted to work here you had to live here.
“Now we have got the dreaded drive in drive out, fly in fly out and the towns are all dying. You only have to go to Dysart, Middlemount...
“If you need anything you have got to go to Rocky and that is crap.
“If the government wants their mines out here (Blackwater) they should invest in the town. People here that say ‘we’ll give you green (money) if you open a chemist up’.
“Surely we are big enough to have two chemists?
“At least they are trying, but it is crazy hey?”, Mr Rothero said.
Karleigh Banks, a 25-year-old local resident who was born in Blackwater, and has since returned to the town after leaving for school, spoke about her experience of getting scripts filled at Pharmacy Essentials Blackwater.
“I actually live here but I work away in Moranbah (at a mine), so it is convenient to have a chemist that is open because I do get scripts regularly filled,” Ms Banks said.
When asked about how the GP shortage at Blackwater with the recent closure of the Blackwater Healthcare Centre and the sudden changes in the Pharmacy Essentials Blackwater operating hours affected her directly, she said it was ‘huge’.
“The doctors here, it takes anywhere from two weeks to three weeks to get an appointment, so you know you’ve got to know you’re going to be sick before you get sick to get into them,” Ms Banks said.
“And I know we have just lost the one in Seeman Street (Blackwater Healthcare Centre), the doctor, so it is obviously making life a lot harder for us at the minute.
“And I mean the chemist (Pharmacy Essentials Blackwater) has been closed, so the next easiest one for us is Emerald.
“That is an hour away, and with people’s rosters and stuff, it is just too hard to get in and try and get stuff sorted.”
Ms Banks felt now that Pharmacy Essentials Blackwater was back to business as usual, the situation would be better for the GPs, pharmacy staff and residents.
“It is going to be a lot more convenient, we don’t have to travel anywhere,” Ms Banks said.
“It will just be a lot better for everyone.”
Rural and regional GPs ‘in crisis’
RACGP President Dr Nicole Higgins said the closure of Blackwater Healthcare Centre would have a detrimental impact on patients across the Central Highlands.
“It (the closure) reduces access to care for patients,” she said.
“It also reduces continuity of care for patients.
“(Patients) are often relying on doctors flying-in or flying-out or doctors operating out of the hospital service versus a dedicated GP clinic and community.
“It is a problem faced by many small towns throughout Queensland.
“It is not just Blackwater.
“Bowen lost a GP clinic, Clermont is struggling.”
The Mackay GP said getting more doctors into the bush was a “wicked problem” that was not solely about money, noting an offer of $500,000 was not enough to get a doctor to Julia Creek in northwest Queensland.
For one thing, GP doctors spend 10-12 years in training and are often settled in their early 30s when they are ready to practise, meaning they are less inclined to move away from family into remote areas.
Covid travel disruptions and a significant delay in visas has also blocked the pipeline of overseas trained doctors into the bush.
Dr Higgins said the October budget had offered “some” support for GPs but “not enough”.
As a point of comparison, she said the Gold Coast Hospital had a yearly operating budget of $2bn, while the federal budget allocated just $250m each year to GPs across the country.
“It is not enough to keep general practice and primary care alive,” she said.
“It is in crisis, especially rural and regional.”
It looks as though the GP shortage crippling Blackwater will ripple out to other rural communities.
Dr Higgins said with last year’s intake, just 13.8 per cent of doctors said they would choose to pursue general practice.
“When I trained, 40-50 per cent of doctors became GPs,” she said.
“General practice is not seen as attractive.
“It is not well remunerated compared to other specialities.”
Alongside strained healthcare delivery, Dr Higgins said the shortages were causing widespread doctor burnout.
Frustrated patients also abused staff and doctors, something Dr Higgins has experienced at her own practice.
“It has been exhausting, absolutely exhausting.”
Pressure building on pharmacists
Emerald pharmacist Jess Burrey said the Blackwater clinic’s closure could add an additional burden on already stretched rural pharmacists.
“I think any closure of any health practice in a rural community obviously has flow-on effects,” she said.
“We are still a little way from Blackwater but certainly our towns are neighbouring and we do share a lot of services between each other.
“The challenges are really in the ability to attract and retain health professionals.
“I think that is felt quite widely across the rural health force.
“It is becoming harder and harder.”
Ms Burrey said the demand pressures on rural pharmacists forced them on occasion to fill more prescriptions than national guidelines recommended.
“In many of these areas, we have no other option but to sometimes deliver beyond that,” she said.
“We can’t hit a quota and then say, ‘oh we will shut the doors today’.
“In many rural areas, we would be practising above what the recommended (quota) would be.”
“That is my experience in Emerald.
“There are days where we exceed what would be ideal.”
Ms Burrey said her business trained extra support staff to ease the burden on pharmacists.
“We combat that (the demand pressure) by trying to train extra support staff,” she said.
“We are taking away as much of the administrative tasks from our pharmacists as possible so they are focused on patient care as much as possible.”
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