Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Angus Chambers: GenPro Chair on the Health Minister setting aside funding to help uplift general practices

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Angus Chambers: GenPro Chair on the Health Minister setting aside funding to help uplift general practices · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So the new Health Minister, Simeon Brown, has begun making
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: moves to try and save our deteriorating healthcare system. So
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: yesterday he announced two hundred and eighty five million dollars
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: in performance based funding for GPS, a new twenty four
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to seven digital service, and in an additional one hundred
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  Speaker 1: placements for overseas trained doctors. So to talk us through
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  Speaker 1: all of this, we've got Jempro chaired doctor Angus Chambers
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  Speaker 1: with me. Hello, Angus, good morning. Is just what you
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: were hoping to get.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Look, it's a good start. We applaud the efforts to
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  Speaker 2: address the what is basically a crisis in general practice,
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  Speaker 2: but I'm not quite sure if it's going to achieve
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  Speaker 2: what they want want it to.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's this performance based funding for GPS? How will
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  Speaker 1: that increase primary care?
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, look it's talented as you know. Funding that
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  Speaker 2: will decrease the wait time to see GPS. Government commissioned
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  Speaker 2: an independent body to kind of serve a GP and
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  Speaker 2: report back to it. There's basically a gap of about
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty seven million dollars a year, and
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  Speaker 2: this is on data five years old needed to enable
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  Speaker 2: general practice deliver what it needs to. So this is
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  Speaker 2: basically ninety five million dollars a year. Probably the figure
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: that was one hundred and thirty seven is closer to
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  Speaker 2: two hundred now, so it's maybe about half of what's needed.
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  Speaker 2: And then the performance based funding is quite concerning, and
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  Speaker 2: general practices, by and large independent businesses performing extremely well.
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  Speaker 2: Now if you let's say, the one of the big
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  Speaker 2: issues is the closed books. So if you put there's
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  Speaker 2: a part of your performance and practices open their books
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  Speaker 2: to get more money, there's no extra workforce. There more
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  Speaker 2: patients going in, the wait time is going to get longer.
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  Speaker 2: So it's not quite clear until we see the detail
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  Speaker 2: of the performance at money, how it's going to play out.
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  Speaker 1: It could possibly incentivize them just to slam their way
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  Speaker 1: through clients quicker.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think private business does that anyway. That's why
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  Speaker 2: general practice that's quite efficient because there's a business imperative.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think gps are actually lazy and sort of
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  Speaker 2: sitting around having cuts the tea and champagne. They're actually
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  Speaker 2: head down working really hard. And by the way, when
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  Speaker 2: you spend your day seeing patients, you've still got several
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  Speaker 2: hours at the end of the day that you need
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  Speaker 2: to do the paperwork. So yeah, not not clear.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, But it's still performance based funding, so they're
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: going to be ranked whether they like it or not. Now, look,
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  Speaker 1: we all know doctors who have come here who can't
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  Speaker 1: work because we didn't provide enough training opportunities. One hundred
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  Speaker 1: placements for overseas trained doctors will come into place. How
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  Speaker 1: did we ever allow that imbalance to happen while we
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: had high immigration figures.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Look, I don't know. We're pleased to see it happen.
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  Speaker 2: That will make some difference. It's going to take a
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  Speaker 2: bit of time. It's got a lot of work that
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  Speaker 2: goes into getting those doctors to the place that they
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  Speaker 2: need to be to deliver care to New Zealand's population.
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  Speaker 2: You'd have to ask the workforce planners about that. There's
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  Speaker 2: been abject failure in work force planning in our system
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  Speaker 2: for quite a long time. We've been warning for almost
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  Speaker 2: two decades of the crunch of retiring gps and impoundered
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  Speaker 2: by the fact that people are leaving the profession of
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: term some conditions. So I think it's a question better
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  Speaker 2: addressed to the workforce planners. But the answer is I
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: don't know.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, well, but you know what people say. They go, well,
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  Speaker 1: you've got an English doctor who decides to come to
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  Speaker 1: New Zealand make a new life. They come here and
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  Speaker 1: then they're told they can't they can't actually do any
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: services for us for at least two years. They're going
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: to go through a training placement if they can actually
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  Speaker 1: find a room there, And everyone says, we'll hold on
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  Speaker 1: and English bodies just the same as New Zealand bodies.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's where I think we might have
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  Speaker 2: this wrong. The English doctors are able to come and
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  Speaker 2: practice like that, although we would like, obviously bureaucracy or
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: so that these doctors are outside of jurisdictions that are
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: recognized by the Medical Council. So yeah, we're absolutely propped
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  Speaker 2: by English popped up by English doctors. We've got a
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  Speaker 2: fantastic contribution by English doctors.
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  Speaker 1: So I got going a minute, I got my metaphor wrong,
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  Speaker 1: but you know what I mean. A body's a body,
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  Speaker 1: a doctor's a doctor. But there we go, and now
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  Speaker 1: we've got one hundred extraplacements for overseas training doctors to
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  Speaker 1: go in and find out how to be a New
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  Speaker 1: Zealand doctor.
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• 4:16
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• 4:19
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