Andrew Little says a dedicated health workforce is getting us through the Covid-19 pandemic and the worst winter for flu anyone can remember. Photo / 123rf, File
Andrew Little says a dedicated health workforce is getting us through the Covid-19 pandemic and the worst winter for flu anyone can remember. Photo / 123rf, File
OPINION
Healthcare is all about people - the people being cared for and the people doing the caring.
Building up the health sector workforce by recruiting staff, paying them properly, and creating the conditions in which they can do their jobs is the Government's top health priority.
The workforce shortageis chronic. It goes back years. Years of under-investment means New Zealand hasn't planned for or trained the workforce we need today, let alone for the future.
The merging of 20 district health boards – with 200 different workforce plans – into a national health service on July 1 means we can now supercharge recruitment to fill vacancies across the country and start to develop a long-term workforce plan.
The job of rebuilding our health services started five years ago. Since coming into Government in late 2017, we've increased health funding by 44 per cent to a record $24 billion a year and committed $7b to hospital buildings.
In public hospitals, we've employed an extra 5700 doctors and nurses and put up the money to hire more, and across the whole health system, there are 3000 more doctors and 10,000 more nurses.
We're training more nurses than ever – 8190 in 2021 compared with 7369 in 2017- and we're offering incentives for doctors and nurses to work in small towns and rural areas that often find it hard to attract health workers.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 5000 critical healthcare workers migrated here, despite the fact most countries had closed their borders.
Now we've changed the immigration rules to make New Zealand one of the easiest places in the world for health workers to come to.
We've got recruitment drives under way to get New Zealand nurses living overseas to come home and to encourage international nurses to move here, and financial support to help former nurses back in the workforce.
We're lifting the pay of health workers; nurses have had average pay rises of 20 per cent under this Government, and we've set aside more than half a billion dollars a year for when the pay-equity agreement reached with the Nurses' Organisation last year finally gets over the line. That will lift nurses' wages by around $10,000 to $12,000 a year before overtime, and should help with recruitment and retention.
But we need to do more.
In the report from Women In Medicine last week, frontline health practitioners in hospitals and GP clinics spoke of their despair at the pressure they face every day - with the patients they do see; concern about the ones they don't see; and a funding model that doesn't fit the reality of what they do.
Andrew Little. Photo / Supplied
Their message was clear: They want to know what is being done to fix the problems, and they want to be involved.
It's the dedication of the thousands of people working in the health workforce that is getting us through not only the Covid-19 pandemic but now also what is probably the worst winter for flu anyone can remember.
We owe it to them, as well as to the country, to get the workforce issues solved once and for all.
That's why, on their first day of existence, I told the two organisations now running the public health system, Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand and Te Aka Whai Ora – the Māori Health Authority, that they must address the staff gaps with urgency, and that doing so is an expression of respect for the workforce.
With our health reforms now in place, we've finally got the opportunity to work together to build a workforce that not only meets our healthcare needs but also provides satisfying and worthwhile careers for the people who work in it.
There is not going to be one quick fix. There are things we can and are doing now and there are things that will take longer.
We need a robust discussion about the way health services are organised and how and where people are treated. In my discussions with health professionals over recent weeks, I sense both enthusiasm and trepidation about this.
Healthy communities depend on good health services. And good health services need a workforce with the right skills, the right support, and the right environment in which people can work and thrive. That is my commitment.
