Shane Reti: Health workforce crying out for GPs

Timely access to medical care is important, writes Dr Shane Reti. Photo / Tania Whyte

OPINION:

For months we have been hearing from health workers that they have a workforce crisis and the health sector is not coping.

One of the areas under particular strain is emergency departments. These are the gateways between community and hospital care and are a good measure of stress in the system.

Despite denying a crisis and repeating his lines that the sector is coping, Health Minister Andrew Little has conceded that emergency department wait times are increasing, with 200 people a month waiting more than 24 hours.

These are terrible emergency department figures. But this is not a reflection on all the hard-working frontline staff – because there are simply not enough of them. New Zealand urgently needs 4000 nurses, yet the Labour Government have dug their heels in and are refusing to listen to a desperate health sector – to immediately add nurses to the fast track straight to resident pathway.

As the National Party's Health spokesman, I have been calling on the Health Minister and his Government to change the immigration settings. However, I was also interested in finding ways we could decompress emergency department waiting times – so I began looking and asking questions.

I focused my attention on people who can visit a GP for free but are still turning up to emergency department during business hours (8am-5pm), such as people under the age of 14-year-olds. According to the last financial year there were 75,000 under 14 years who turned up to the emergency departments during business hours.

There are several possible explanations for this number. Some of these cases would have needed emergency department care, but some of these cases could be explained by the inability to access a same-day GP consultation. Concerned parents who are turned away from the doctors have little choice but to go to the emergency department.

This observation exposes another part of the health system that is broken – having access to GPs. Unsurprisingly, this is another area that has a workforce shortage. New Zealand currently needs 1500 GPs and the ones we currently have are an aging population.

Small changes to our immigration settings – like putting nurses on the fast track for residence – will help address some of the immediate workforce issues, but a long-term solution is to train more doctors and nurses here at home.

But instead of increasing the number of doctors graduating from our medical schools, the Government has maintained the previous year's cap on the number of training places at 539.

With Kiwis being turned away from emergency departments, and wait lists blowing out, it beggars belief that the Health Minister is choosing to pour all of his budget and attention into a Wellington restructure, rather than training more doctors.

The Health Minister has failed to bring in the migrant health workers we need in the short term, and now he has failed to turn on the tap to our domestic pipeline to train our own health workforce.

Instead of pouring billions into a dangerous and disruptive restructure, the minister should be focused on ensuring that health spending is delivering more frontline services, reducing wait times, and improving health outcomes.