The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has again reported in Australia's Health 2016 that 'Australians living in rural and remote areas tend to have lower life expectancy, higher rates of disease and injury, and poorer access to and use of health services than people living in major cities'.

This echoes the findings of the first Australia's Health report in 1988 that found regional variations in health services and outcomes across Australia.

Executive Director of the Murray Darling Medical School, Mr Mark Burdack, said, "While there have been clear improvements in rural and regional health over the last three decades, we continue to experience general practice and specialist shortages, higher rates of chronic disease and higher rates of preventable hospitalisations.

"The big problem today is that city medical graduates continue to shun rural practice. 

"The current solution to rural doctor shortages is to send rural students to the city to study medicine.  Yet, one study found that while around 60 per cent of rural students at a major city medical school wanted to work in rural practice at the beginning of the course, by the end fewer than 10 per cent did so.

"There is a risk that we are actually turning rural students off rural practice by sending them to study a metropolitan curriculum, alongside metropolitan students, in a metropolitan area.

"According to the Department of Health, we now have an oversupply of doctors in the cities. This is not a solution to rural doctor shortages.

"While metropolitan medical students are enthusiastic about training in the regions, the vast majority say that they don't want to work in regional communities in the longer term.

Mr Burdack said that this is not a result of a lack of Government effort or investment. 

"The recent evidence shows that keeping medical graduates in our regions requires medical education to be delivered in the regions, and run alongside other rural health disciplines," he said. 

"We need to update our approach.  City based medical education is shown to be less effective than rural based medical education." Mr Burdack said.

"We know that rural medical schools, like the proposed Murray Darling Medical School, will deliver doctors to rural practice. We welcome the Government commitment to undertake a review the chronic shortage of doctors in our regions as one of the key contributors to the continuing disparities in rural and regional health status and services identified in the AIHW report." he said.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) and La Trobe University submitted a proposal to the Federal Government to establish a rural medical school in 2013.  The Nationals promised to establish the Murray Darling Medical School during the 2013 election.  Since that time, the Government has funded two new city medical schools, despite a recent report by the Department that there may be an oversupply of doctors in the cities and continuing shortages in rural areas.  Rural communities are waiting on a response from the Government to their proposal for a rural medical school to address rural doctor shortages.