The Rural Doctors Association of Australia has revealed that the Federal Government's plan for a national health and hospital network is welcome but fails to address a shortage of general practitioners in regional areas.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced his plan for local networks to run hospitals, calling it "the biggest change to national healthcare since the introduction of Medicare", as Canberra's share of funding is increased to 60 per cent from 40 per cent.

But the Rural Doctors Association, though being supportive of plans to bring in local hospital boards, says that "the plan failed to deal with the shortage of GPs in regional areas and the shortage of obstetric surgical anesthetic emergency and maternity specialists".

Steve Sant from the RDAA said, "National standards for access to health are welcome, but they will not work in rural areas unless more doctors can be enticed to the bush".

"It's a major issue in rural Australia and without those professionals there, there's no point funding a health service in any way because there's no health service", Mr. Sant said.

"That's clearly something they need to address over coming years if they're going to have a decent health service".