Editorial: GP funding crisis must be solved to ensure Kiwis get the care they need

OPINION

There was once a time when your family doctor knew your name, ailments and medication history, tending everything from broken bones to quiet afflictions. They knew your parents and your children. Their door was always open, often beyond office hours.

They were never hard up but drove sensible British cars and wore sensible shoes.

And while those days now seem far away, with the advent of medical centres, one-stop health shops and a seemingly revolving door of doctors and nurses, New Zealand’s modern-day GPs are facing a funding crisis.

General practitioners across the country – already facing an acute shortage of trained staff - say they are being forced to increase their fees as successive government funding has failed to keep up with costs.

“General practice is at crisis point,” says a letter written by one exasperated Hamilton medical centre to patients, explaining a recent decision to increase adult consultation fees from $54 to $59.

Advocates for the GPs argue that government “capitation” funding, based on the number of enrolled patients, has increasingly failed to cover costs.

It leaves them with no choice, they say, but to ramp up fees.

A report commissioned by the last Labour-led government found that GPs were losing $29 per patient through the current funding scheme.

Around half of their work was being done for free, the report concluded.

Another report published this month by General Practice NZ said their resourcing “has simply not kept up with need and demand”.

They say it has led to “a desperate and growing situation” where Kiwis aren’t accessing the care they need when they need it.

Health Minister Dr Shane Reti, whose career began in family medicine and dermatology in Whangarei, agrees that the funding model is no longer fit for purpose.

In a recent statement, Reti said he was looking forward to receiving advice on a sustainable solution for primary care providers.

David Seymour’s Act Party campaigned on giving GPs a 13 per cent funding boost but the commitment did not feature in its coalition agreement with National.

While there may be little public sympathy for the financial struggles of doctors during a cost-of-living crisis, we must ensure our family doctors can operate in a system that offers their communities continuous high-quality primary care.

As Dr Bryan Betty recently wrote in the Listener: “I cannot stress enough to our new Government how urgent this is, because the biggest improvements in population health and the greatest value for health dollars comes from people having convenient access to high-quality general practice and primary care.”

Without our health, we can never face our daily life challenges head-on.

And the humble GP has always sat at the very heart of caring for Kiwis and must continue to do so.