Kate Hawkesby: Start investing in our health system now, or it'll only get worse

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge · Jul 27, 2022 · 2m

I note the average time to wait to get in to see your GP is three weeks. That’s the average. For many it’s longer than that.

And for some rural areas in this country, you’d be hard pressed to see a GP at all, far less one close to you. You may have to drive for miles to get to even get to one. So we know it’s a problem, but how to fix it?

President of the Royal NZ College of GP’s, Samantha Murton, wrote a piece for the Herald yesterday saying how it’s not an easy fix. “We can’t magic away the chronic GP shortage”, she said.

She puts it down to the low number of trained GP’s.

She says that…