The locum, of 20 years’ experience, had been contracted by Country Health SA to work on-call at Kangaroo Island Health Services for a month, at the rate of $11,000 a week – more than $1500 a day – but after less than a week said he could no longer cope with the workload.

CHSA reportedly offered him a further $500 a day to stay but he flew out on Friday evening.

A doctor from Port Augusta was flown in to cover the weekend, paid $2000 a day, and left Monday evening.

CHSA sent a paramedic on Tuesday morning to cover the emergency on-call round until a new locum arrived Wednesday morning.

CHSA reportedly contacted several of the Kangaroo Island doctors to fill the gap earlier this week.

They offered to do so through their new entity Island Locums at a rate of $550 a day but CHSA said it would pay only the agreed rate it had offered them separately as doctors - $220 a day.

“They are prepared to offer a locum an obscene $2000-plus a day but they won’t pay us a quarter of that,” one of the doctors said. Two of the doctors from the Kangaroo Island Medical Clinic are registered with recruitment agency Ochre, which has been supplying locums to the hospital, but neither has been contacted to fill the vacancy at Kingscote hospital.

“We are tarnished now. They would rather have no doctor there, or pay these inflated rates, than have one of us.”

“I suspect we have been boycotted,” one said.

“We have to wonder if the Minister of Health is aware of the decisions his bureaucrats are making. Kangaroo Islanders are sick of being treated by fly-in, fly-out doctors at great expense, and losing vital local services because there is supposedly not enough money.

“They want their doctors to be on-call, and these doctors are asking for a modest increase in on-call fees, certainly less than either the current locums or existing special deals elsewhere in SA, yet CHSA refuses to negotiate.”

Kangaroo Island Health Services director Stephen Evans said yesterday that “ideally” CHSA would provide locums “and where necessary, extended care paramedics - highly trained clinicians who are skilled to provide advanced treatments including wound care and administering a wide range of drugs”.

He said all locums were reviewed for appropriate experience.

The Islander is aware some recent locums have been unable to place an IV drip, put plaster on broken limbs or conduct an X-ray and lcoal doctors have been called in to help out.