How to hire a GP in Australia (2026)

By Sam Gillette, Founder of Taro

Hiring a GP is the hardest recruitment problem most practice owners ever face, and it isn't close. This guide covers where the candidates actually are, the five channels clinics use to reach them (compared honestly, including where each one fails), the eligibility checks that quietly kill hires at the last step, and the preparation that separates clinics that fill roles from clinics that wait.

Why is it so hard to hire a GP in Australia?

Two structural forces make it hard, and neither is temporary: Australia is projected to be short 11,392 full-time GPs by 2032, almost one in three (Deloitte Access Economics × Cornerstone Health), and the GPs worth hiring aren't looking, because roughly 70% of professionals aren't job-hunting at any given moment (LinkedIn Talent Solutions).

Supply is shrinking relative to demand. Behind the shortage number sits a pipeline problem: only around 15% of final-year medical students now put general practice as their first career preference (RACGP / Medical Deans national survey). Fewer GPs are entering than the market needs, and every clinic in the country is drawing from the same shrinking pool.

The GPs worth hiring aren't looking. The GP who would suit your practice is very likely employed at a clinic within driving distance of yours, reasonably content, and not reading job ads. They move when a specific, better situation is put in front of them, not when a listing goes up.

Hold both facts and the standard experience explains itself: the ad runs for months, the agency sends the same shortlist everyone else saw, and the room stays vacant. Nothing is broken. The tools are just pointed at the small slice of the market that's actively looking.

What should you settle before you start searching?

Three things: the role defined in terms a GP would read, your location's MM and DPA classification, and the size of your real catchment. Clinics that struggle usually started searching before they were ready to hire. An hour on these three saves months.

1. Define the role like a GP would read it. VR or non-VR. Full-time, part-time, or sessions. The billing arrangement and the percentage. The roster, the patient mix, the admin load, who else works there. "GP wanted, great team" is not a role. It's a vacancy notice. Specific roles get read; vague ones get scrolled past. If you're unsure what to put in front of a candidate, our guide on what to offer a GP covers the structures.

2. Check your location's classification. Your clinic's Modified Monash (MM) category and Distribution Priority Area (DPA) status determine which doctors can legally work for you under Section 19AB: many overseas-trained doctors can only access Medicare in DPA locations. Check both on the Health Workforce Locator (health.gov.au) before you shortlist anyone, not after. Metro (MM1) non-DPA clinics are fishing in a smaller pond than they think; regional DPA clinics have more access than they're often told.

3. Size your real catchment. Your candidate pool is not "GPs in your state". It's practitioners within a realistic commute of your postcode, plus those with a genuine reason to relocate. Sizing that honestly changes which channel makes sense. Our hiring radius guide shows how to do it; regional and rural clinics, whose search is usually a relocation rather than a commute, have their own guide to regional clinic recruitment.

What are the ways to hire a GP, and how do they compare?

Five channels: job boards, recruitment agencies, locums, DIY outreach, and an owned outreach system. They differ on whether they reach GPs who aren't actively looking, what the clinic keeps afterwards, and what the next hire costs. Each is examined in depth in GP recruitment agency alternatives.

Job boards work when your ideal hire happens to be in the active minority this month. For metro clinics with strong offers they occasionally deliver; for everyone else they're a slow lottery. They also tell you nothing about the 70%+ who never saw the ad.

Agencies front-load convenience: they do the searching, you pay on result: typically 15–25% of the first-year package, again on every subsequent hire. The structural catch is what happens after: the candidate pool, the market knowledge and the relationships stay with the recruiter. Your second vacancy starts from zero, at full price. The full arithmetic is in our cost guide.

Locums keep the doors open and buy time. As a bridge across a sudden departure they're the right tool; as a strategy they're the most expensive way to not solve the problem: the vacancy is intact the day the locum leaves.

DIY outreach (the practice owner personally writing to GPs in the area) genuinely works, because doctors answer practice owners. It's also a part-time job: building the list, finding contact details, sequencing follow-ups, staying compliant under the Spam Act, keeping records. Owners who try it usually stop after the first vacancy fills, and the machinery dies with it. Why the owner-to-owner effect works is covered in recruiting under your own name.

An owned system industrialises the DIY approach without losing what makes it work: the practitioner map for your catchment gets built once, outreach goes out under your clinic's name, replies land with you, and the infrastructure stays after the hire, so the second vacancy is a campaign, not a crisis.

Which checks should you run before you make an offer?

Four, run at shortlist stage rather than offer stage: AHPRA registration, VR status, the doctor's 19AB position, and a fit conversation before contracts. Every one of them has undone a done deal, and for overseas-trained doctors, the 19AB check is the most common late-stage killer of all.

• AHPRA registration: current, unconditional, right division. Takes two minutes at ahpra.gov.au. Do it first.
• VR status: vocational registration changes the Medicare rebates the doctor attracts, which changes the economics of the role for both sides.
• 19AB / moratorium position: for overseas-trained doctors, whether your location's DPA status lets them access Medicare at your clinic. This is the single most common late-stage deal-killer, and the rules have specific carve-outs: get the doctor's individual position confirmed early, in writing.
• Fit conversations before contracts: patient mix, billing philosophy, hours flexibility. A GP who discovers the real roster after signing is a GP who leaves inside a year.

How quickly do you need to reply to an interested GP?

The same day: when an interested GP puts their hand up, through any channel, the clinic that responds that day usually wins them. It's one operational habit worth naming because it's free and almost nobody does it. Interested doctors go quiet when replies take days, and they're rarely only talking to you. Set up whatever your channel is so that an interested reply reaches the decision-maker in minutes, not via a Monday inbox sweep. More in our reply speed guide.

What's the checklist before you start recruiting?

Seven items, settled before the first message goes out:

1. Role defined in GP terms: VR status, sessions, billing split, roster, patient mix
2. MM and DPA status checked on the Health Workforce Locator
3. Realistic catchment sized: who can actually drive here?
4. Offer settled: percentage, hourly, or hybrid, and what beyond money
5. AHPRA/VR/19AB checks scheduled at shortlist stage
6. Same-day reply standard agreed: who answers, how fast
7. Channel chosen with the table above, and an honest answer on what you'll own afterwards

Hiring for the rest of the clinical team is a different market with different rules, covered in hiring practice nurses.

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