Making the announcement at Monday’s post-Cabinet press conference with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Brown said there was a desperate need for more doctors.
The new measures include incentive payments of up to $20,000 for primary care clinics that hire graduate nurses.
“This will help attract essential healthcare where they are needed most, particularly in our rural communities,” Brown said.
The Government will establish a new 24-7 digital service available on a user-paid basis to all New Zealanders. Brown said for some people, this service would be game-changing.
The service would be manned by New Zealand-registered GPs and nurses and be able to offer services such as prescriptions or test ordering.
Health Minister Simeon Brown and Health NZ group director Alex Pimm check out the Whangārei Hospital transit lounge. Photo / Northern Advocate
Brown, who took over the portfolio from Dr Shane Reti five weeks ago, also announced an additional 100 placements for internationally trained doctors to work in primary care, saying the current system “didn’t make sense”.
“Even though we need more doctors, we have overseas-trained doctors living in New Zealand who want to work in primary care but can’t because of barriers to registration and training.
“It doesn’t make sense when these people are out doing other jobs when we have a desperate need for doctors in our doctor clinics today.”
Health New Zealand will also provide $285 million for general practices over three years. This new funding would be based on performance and be aimed at incentivising GPs to do things such as opening their books to new patients and meeting key Government health targets such as immunisation rates.
Luxon told reporters at the post-Cabinet press conference New Zealand had the best doctors and nurses who did an amazing job — but the system was letting them down.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at a post-Cabinet press conference in the Beehive. Photo / Mark Mitchell
“[The system was] dealing with botched health reforms and layers of bureaucracy, poor governance, management and financial controls, loss of regional and local decision making and outdated infrastructure and inefficient ways of working.”
Luxon said his Government had spent more on health than any other.
“To give you a feel for it, we already spend around $28 billion on health each and every year. On top of that, the Government has made a record $17b into Health New Zealand over three years.
“While we have workforce challenges in some particularly parts of the healthcare system. I think we have also made some good progress on the health workforce. A good example would be nurses. In the last year we have been actually increased nursing staff by almost 2000 nurses.
“Despite all of that funding and despite all that workforce growth, we are not seeing the results we have invested in.”
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said there was a desperate need for more GPs in New Zealand. The focus should be on early prevention so fewer people need to go to emergency departments for care.
“The current Government has made that situation worse already.
“If you look at things like free prescriptions or the minor winter ailments programme that we introduced where you could go to the pharmacy and get free medicines to stop them ending up in emergency departments – those were things that were making a difference that this Government has either cancelled or scaled back.”
The new measures are:
100 clinical placements for overseas-trained doctors to work in primary care.
Incentives for primary care to recruit up to 400 graduate registered nurses per year for three years.
A new 24/7 digital service for all New Zealanders to be able to access online medical appointments.
Health NZ providing a $285 million uplift for general practice over three years.
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.
