A testing station at Northcross urgent care clinic at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The clinic cut its hours this week because of a doctor shortage. Photo / Alex Burton
A testing station at Northcross urgent care clinic at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The clinic cut its hours this week because of a doctor shortage. Photo / Alex Burton
A large Auckland urgent care clinic has had to cut its hours and close on weekends because of a shortage of doctors.
It comes as GPs launch a campaign to highlight their tough working conditions and lobby for better pay and a larger workforce.
In the last week, Shorecare urgent care clinic in Northcross was forced to reduce its hours on four days and close completely on another two days.
Shorecare chair Alex Price said that while sickness and one-off factors like GP exams had contributed to the closures, they were mostly driven by chronic doctor shortages.
This had also contributed to longer waiting times. The Northcross clinic was exceeding its target of seeing 90 per cent of patients within two hours, but at Shorecare’s 24-hour clinic in Smales Farm, the rate was 79 per cent.
The clinics were staffed by locums, who were usually GPs from the area, and urgent care physicians.
Price said the shortage was partly systemic - successive governments had not trained enough doctors - and partly the result of Covid-19, as closed borders had prevented migrant doctors from coming into the country.
“We’ve got a situation where there is a worldwide shortage, and we can’t pay as much or offer some of the residency pathways as competing countries. And with closed borders over Covid, we’ve run dry - there is simply not enough doctors to go around.”
He said that until the number of doctors being trained had risen, the Government needed to offer improved pay and conditions if it was to address the shortage and prevent attrition.
GP association GenPro, which represents 400 family doctors, released a report titled “On the Brink” this week, which listed a range of requests for the Government including pay parity with the hospital sector, improved working conditions and better funding allocation.
GenPro chair Dr Tim Malloy said GP shortages were often worst in places with a large proportion of vulnerable patients, including the Far North and Tairawhiti.
“So the consequences for these people is that this will have real impact on their health. And we’re seeing almost daily the reports from the EDs and secondary services around the load that they’re experiencing, which in my opinion, reflects some of the failures of the Government to support primary care.”
Health Minister Andrew Little said Government was addressing the GP shortage but it would not be resolved overnight. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Speaking to TVNZ this morning, Health Minister Andrew Little acknowledged the GP shortage and said it was a longstanding problem which would not be resolved overnight.
The Government introduced measures last month to support the sector, including a pay rise for trainee GPs that brought them in line with hospital registrars, and more funding for clinics that trained them. It has also made it easier for migrant doctors and nurses to move to New Zealand.
Little hoped the measures would help lift the number of doctors training as GPs from 200 to 300 a year, though he warned that could take “a few years” to reach that rate.
As part of health sector reforms, officials were looking at how to get the best out of the health workforce and potentially lighten the load for GPs. He cited this year’s flu vaccination campaign, in which pharmacists administered 25 per cent of vaccines - the highest rate on record.
“One of the challenges that we’ve got when we think about the provision of health services in the future is ‘Who is best placed to do what? Does the GP have to do everything? Or can we actually distribute some of that work?’”
Malloy said the pay increase for GP registrars was a welcome move, but that the pay gap with hospital specialists still grew significantly once a GP finished training. They sometimes earned half what their hospital counterparts earned, he said.
He said the immigration changes had “made it easier but not easy”. He noted that a GP with 20 years’ experience in the UK had his visa rejected because he originally trained in South Africa, which did not satisfy the requirements of the scheme.
