By KEVIN TAYLOR
New Zealand's rural GP crisis is poised to worsen as dozens of ageing doctors retire in the next eight years, with no one to fill their shoes.
The new Waikato District Health Board was told yesterday that the number of rural GPs in the Midland region would halve in five to eight years as doctors retired and were not replaced.
The region - covering Coromandel, Waikato, the Bay of Plenty, the East Coast and Taranaki - has 185 rural GPs.
New Zealand has a shortfall of about 50 rural doctors. The halving of the numbers of GPs in the Midland region alone would push that figure closer to 140.
New GPs are turning their noses up at working in small towns for pay averaging $60,000 to $70,000, and many are being lured overseas. Replacements for the old-style country doctor - on call at all times - are becoming harder to find.
Rural GPs are now predicting that small-town health services will start to collapse.
Dr Tim Malloy, chairman of the Rural GP Network, said its membership was ageing rapidly and many were likely to retire in the next five to 10 years.
"You will see small-town primary health services fall over," he said.
Governments had ignored 10 years of warnings.
Dr Malloy said the rush of doctors retiring at the same time was partly because of the natural ageing of those in rural practices, and because many GPs recruited from overseas in the past 20 years were already older people.
Little effort had been made in that time to recruit younger doctors or make rural practices more attractive, he said.
Kaitaia, set to lose three GPs next month, is the latest upper North Island town struggling to resolve a GP crisis.
Waihi is also facing problems as 56-year-old Derek Hardy plans retirement after 27 years as a GP in the town.
Despite having his practice on the market for a year, he has had just one response.
"You can't really sell it - you can't even give it away."
But he said he would not just walk away and abandon his practice.
Dr Malloy said young doctors were put off rural GP work because of a lack of support, long hours and on-call periods, with the consequent effect on their families.
And the city lifestyle was more attractive.
More than 60 per cent of rural GPs were immigrants, Dr Malloy said, but even they were opting for better money in other countries.
A spokesman for Health Minister Annette King said the Government recognised the problem and was planning solutions.
One strategy was to set up a committee to plan for workforce changes in the health sector.
A scheme to provide more rural locums was also planned.
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