If you’re seeking medical help from Hawke’s Bay’s Te Mata Peak Practice, Warren Elliott or one of his Extended Care Paramedic (ECP) colleagues might be your first port of call.
A growing healthcare trend in New Zealand and worldwide is seeing trained paramedics working alongside GPs and nurses in the primary care sector, acting as triage and treatment specialists to lessen the load on both general practice and ambulance staff.
Elliott says the approach has enabled his private practice to reduce a three-week wait down to one week. He tells Mitchell Hageman why it’s a game-changer for health.
From volunteering for Hato Hone St John in his youth to now being a registered health professional, Warren Elliott has seen plenty of changes to healthcare during his time as a paramedic.
Becoming an ECP fuelled his drive to create better health outcomes. Now, he’s helping ease the burden on practice staff and St John.
While still working casually for St John, he’s permanently based at Te Mata Peak Practice, helping triage patients and assisting other team practitioners with their clinical needs.
“I was one of the first students to go through the extended care paramedicine paper, which is a postgrad diploma with AUT,” he said.
“That was really when we knew we could do things to reduce St John’s overall workload in the sense of being able to treat people on site, but we also realised we could take it a little bit further and use this in primary health.”
Becoming a registered health professional “opened the door” for those who “wanted to be the person at the top of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom.
“We run a paramedic clinic. We will see patients in the treatment rooms and work alongside the nursing team to intervene at their level when they need it.”
At Te Mata Peak Practice the weekend clinic is run entirely by the ECP. Elliott said that while a GP was on call, their systems covered nearly all of what the paramedics saw.
“If we have a question we can’t manage, we can go to an on-call doc who will either look after it or assist us with our thought process.”
He was well aware of the gravity of the challenges facing private and public practices.
He knows another urgent care clinic in Hastings, and others, are implementing systems like the one at Te Mata Practice to help meet demand.
“All practices are struggling with a shortage of doctors and an increasing population. This means they are often under-resourced.”
But the results were proof this was a “game-changer” for medical operators.
“When we first joined, wait times to see a doctor were about three weeks on average. We managed to get that down to a one-week wait just by being involved and what we do.
“Sometimes we can even get you in on the same day, depending on the acuity level.”
John Bruning, chief executive of the Australasian College of Paramedicine, said paramedics working in team-based primary and urgent care settings were proven to have a positive impact on patient access and outcomes, health workforce sustainability, and career growth opportunities.
“Expanding the capabilities of the health care team through the inclusion of paramedics has shown to benefit patients in the UK, Canada and Australia,” he said.
“Rural and remote areas across Australasia are struggling to attract and retain the GP workforce; we advocate for the health system to think innovatively about how paramedics can support these communities.”
However, funding barriers often prevented the integration of paramedics in multidisciplinary team-based clinics.
“Imagine what paramedics could do to improve health equity, health access and health outcomes for all New Zealanders.”
Mitchell Hageman joined Hawke’s Bay Today in January 2023. From his Napier base, he writes regularly on social issues, arts and culture, and the community. He has a particular love for stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.