Albury-Wodonga Paediatric Group informed local GPs on Monday of the decision to close its books for assessment referrals, including those for the autism spectrum, due to an unprecedented demand putting a strain on their medical appointment waiting time.

Paediatrician David Christie said the decision was about being "transparent" with families that wait times could be up to two years.

"The silence is deafening when trying to get community paediatricians to regional areas," he told The Border Mail.

"We wear multiple hats as general paediatricians including acute medicine in the hospitals, that is four of us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

"And that is on top of our patients at the clinic, which are overwhelmingly more developmental referrals than medical."

In the letter practice manager Jody Reid said doctors would now need to refer children to Melbourne or Sydney or other private paediatric clinics, or locally to mental health services.

"Our service is no longer in the position to continue to provide appointments for non-organic conditions," the letter said.

"We are receiving unprecedented levels of demand for developmental and behavioural type assessments.

"We have now closed the wait list completely and are no longer accepting new referrals for assessment as we are at full capacity for these types of referrals."

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Dr Christie, who has been in Albury for 17 years, said there had been an "enormous" increase in developmental referrals.

"Particularly for suspected autism," he said.

"And this is happening right across the country, if we were to continue to add referrals to our waiting list, it could blow out and that isn't fair to our patients or their families.

"We had to separate our medical referrals, for things like allergies, diabetes, cancer, babies not thriving, and what we call non-organic, meaning not stemming from the organs, the developmental referrals to triage properly.

"Unfortunately these medical patients need to see us more regularly and can't wait a long time as it will be detrimental to their health."

The medical waiting period at the clinic is regularly around 16 weeks.

Dr Christie said the clinic would re-open the waiting list for non-organic referrals when they feel it is at a "reasonable waiting time".