Editorial: GP nurses’ pay parity puzzling

An estimated $200m each year will be spent addressing the wage gap between community-based frontline workers and their counterparts who work for Te Whatu Ora. Photo / 123rf, File

EDITORIAL:

With an apparent refusal to engage with general practitioners during the early onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and during the crucial start to the vaccine rollout, one could be forgiven for wondering what issue this Government has with GPs.

This week, Health Minister Andrew Little announced what should have been welcome news of additional funding to support pay parity for nurses employed in aged care, hospices and Māori and Pasifika health providers.

Nurses’ Organisation chief executive Paul Goulter said the Government should be acknowledged for the particularly good news for Māori and Pasifika health service providers whose wage gap has been crushingly unjust for so long.

Illustration / Rod Emmerson

Even so, Goulter could not ignore the “regrettable” exclusion of nurses working in general practice.

Little has justified the differential treatment of general practice nurses by saying there was no evidence of pay disparity between general practice nurses and their hospital-based counterparts.

“Decisions about what is paid to whom have to be based on hard evidence, and the data provided to me by the Nurses’ Organisation and the GP organisation GenPro for that sector did not show any real evidence of pay difference at this point.”

However, Goulter was particularly strong on this point.

“We don’t agree with that at all, and both our members and employers say they are losing staff at a rate of knots to jobs with Te Whatu Ora where the pay is much better.”

Medical director of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, Bryan Betty, has long stated a lack of support and investment in general practice is having a profound effect on the health of New Zealanders. He says people are struggling to find a GP because of closed books or not being able to access services without going on a waitlist because of a GP shortage.

GenPro chairman Dr Tim Malloy said the pay disparity amounted to continuing disrespect for general practice nurses and added to the workforce crisis undermining family doctor services and directly affecting patients as well as demand on the wider health system.

Molloy points to a Government general practice funding review dated July 2022 - but only released last month - which stated that general practice services are not funded adequately to deliver care for patients, constituting a serious deficiency in a core part of New Zealand’s health system.

In addition, it observed the situation was consistent with constraints in general practice services, with difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff, and with rising barriers to access.

If Little’s comment about being yet to see “hard evidence or data” to support the GP nurses’ claims sound familiar, he also said he had not seen any data showing hospitals were reaching record levels of delays and patient presentations. This time, the data may be skewed by GPs topping up nurses’ pay packets.

It may well be that resisting the pay parity claims from general practices plays into the hands of Te Whatu Ora to entice more nurses into a depleted workforce.

But one has to wonder again, what is this Government’s issue with general practices?