Medical Training Review Panel 19th Report

Modified Monash Model

On 24 May 2015, Senator the Honourable Fiona Nash, Assistant Minister for Health, announced the launch of the Modified Monash Model (MMM) as a new classification system for use in health workforce programs.

The MMM is derived from research by the Monash University as to how locations relate to key GP workforce indicators. That research showed that the remoteness and population size of a town provides a reliable and accurate measure to determine how attractive it would be for a medical practitioner to want to work and live in that area.

The MMM is based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Australian Statistical Geography Standard – Remoteness Areas, with locations in Inner and Outer Regional Australia being further classified by the local town size.

To recognise that larger towns have a functional service area wider than their town boundaries, “buffer zones” have been used to define a large city’s area of influence. The “buffer zones” are based on road distance calculations provided by the Australian Population and Migration Research Centre. The sizes of the “buffer zones” were agreed to by the Rural Classification Technical Working Group, which comprised key stakeholders and technical experts.

The resulting classification is described in Table 3.1. The public can determine their Modified Monash Model classification through the use of an online locator on the Doctor Connect website.

Table 3.1: Modified Monash Model Classification