The state government needs to better consider family circumstances of medical professionals they wish to recruit and retain in regional Tasmania.
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This is one of a number of point the Australian Medical Association will raise when the new Health Staff Recruitment Taskforce meets on Wednesday.
The taskforce has been convened by new Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff.
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The association's industrial relations specialist, Michael Lumsden-Steel, said mainland doctors and specialists had to take a pay cut to work in Tasmania.
He said more recently these workers had to deal an expensive and limited housing market and an unreliable public transport system, particularly in regional areas.
Dr Lumsden-Steel said employment opportunities for partners and educational opportunities for children were considered by doctors and specialists when they looked at working in regional communities.
"When people are moving to these centres, they look at the overall package and how it is going to affect their family," he said.
Dr Lumsden-Steel said there needed to be data-informed changes to how elective surgeries were handled in the state by looking at what the actual workload was and what it would be in the future.
"And we're calling for transparency around what the true public workload is because for a patient it is very unclear how long it will take for them to have an investigation or procedure done," he said.
Dr Lumsden-Steel said the government had spent millions on short-term solutions to the elective surgery waiting list, such as buying services in other hospitals, rather than investing the money into genuinely addressing the issue.
"We need to urgently and rapidly increase the physical bed capacity in all of the hospitals, particularly in Launceston and in Hobart," he said.
"The failure to increase capacity over many, many years has led us to the situation we are in right now - and right now we are at a tipping point.
"There is so much inefficiency in hospitals and operating theatres due to not having the bed capacity available."
Dr Lumsden-Steel said there had been too much hope and belief that if preventative health care funding increased into the future, that would help address issues with bed capacity in public hospitals.
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Political reporter for Australian Community Media, based in Hobart.
Political reporter for Australian Community Media, based in Hobart.
