What is the solution to doctor shortages?

Waitakere's Hospital emergency department has cut its hours.

One of New Zealand's most remote and cash-strapped health boards is paying fill-in surgeons up to $2500 a day - a pay bonanza that beats some of our highest earners.

Like many health services in provincial parts of the North Island, the South Island's West Coast District Health Board has difficulty attracting and retaining specialists.

But the West Coast is understood to have offered some of the highest rates to lure locum surgeons.

What is the solution to doctor shortages?