Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Samantha Murton: Royal New Zealand College of GPs President on the consistent lack of funding for primary healthcare providers

Transcript

Samantha Murton: Royal New Zealand College of GPs President on the consistent lack of funding for primary healthcare providers · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: New research from the Royal New Zealand College of GPS
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: has come to the conclusion that primary healthcare is being
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: financially neglected. Only five point four percent of this country's
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: health budget goes to primary care and that stayed exactly
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the same since two thousand and nine. So I'm joined
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: now by the President of the Royal College, Samantha Merton,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: doctor Setmantha Merton. Commodity is sam good morning?
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Here are you good?
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: It's the same percentage, but of a bigger pie. So
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: can you really say that primary care is being neglected?
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Although it might be of a bigger pie. The problem
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: that we have is that the complexity in volume of
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: work that has gone on in primary care has expanded
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: enormously over that time. So proportionally it may look like
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: it's stage detic, but also functionally it's stage static as well,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: because there's way more work that we're doing.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you say it's underfunded. What are the consequences
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: we're seeing from that underfunding?
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think it's people know we are struggling
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: to have GPS coming into the service. We're struggling to
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: keep our books open because you don't have enough staff.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: We're struggling to retain our nursing team because there's better
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: options overseas or in the hospitals, and so we'd like
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: to have an expanded service and do as much here
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: in the community as we can, but it's hard when
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: you're trying to I suppose reconfigure some that any stretch
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: at as star as you can, but it doesn't go
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: any further than what we can currently do.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Are there other areas of the health sector that are
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: benefiting from the underfunding of primary healthcare so they're getting
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a bigger size.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing is it's about where do you invest
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: so that you make the whole system run more smoothly,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: And so as soon as you reduce what goes into
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: primary care, then it costs more having people dealt with
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: in hospitals. And if you're not seen earlier in own
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: their own gp and looked after and had everything that
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: they need to do, then they may get sicker, faster
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: and end up in a hospital setting, which costs a
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: whole of all. So it becomes this vicious cycle of
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: people going to hospital is costing lots of money. Then
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: you can afford to invest in primary care where the
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: most efficient invest care can be done to prevent people
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: getting into hospitals.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: So what do you want? Do you want more money
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: or do you want a more equitable redistribution of what
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: there is?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I think when you look globally at other countries, the
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: distribution that goes into primary care is around the ten
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: to fourteen percent, not five. So every country has increases
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: budget over time, but we would like to see that
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: the genuine investment in primary care is like not rather
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: than five percent of the total, it's actually probably around
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: ten percent of the total at least.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Doctor Samantha Murton, I thank you so much for your
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: time today. For more from earlier edition with Ryan Bridge,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: listen live to News Talks it Be from five am weekdays,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio