GP shortage at ‘crisis levels’ – new report
There is a 50 per cent chance your family doctor will retire in the next decade and 100 extra GPs need to be trained each year to counter the loss, according to a new report.
The future workforce report, released on Thursday by the Royal New Zealand College of GPs, describes a profession ‘‘in crisis’’ and warns trainee numbers will need to increase from 200 annually to 300 from next year, if New Zealand expects to meet population demand in the next decade.
Nationally, GP clinics have about one full-time doctor per 1500 patients but it ‘‘should be about 1 to 1000’’, the college’s medical director, Dr Bryan Betty, said.
At his practice in Cannons Creek, Wellington, the ratio is about 1 doctor to 1300, ‘‘and 90 per cent of them are high needs patients’’, Betty said, which demanded a much greater workload.
‘‘It is totally unacceptable. We should be about 1 to 900.’’
The fact 50 per cent of family doctors wanted to retire by 2032 ‘‘was a real concern’’, Betty said, as the workload was already compounded by the ageing population, the fact more patients had multiple health problems, and an administrative load that was always growing.
Just north of Kaikohe and the numbers are even worse. Dr Taco Kistemaker, who has worked in his community for 15 years, has between 2500 and 3000 patients on his books at Broadway Health Waipapa. He said he worked about 60-hour weeks, in an effort to keep up with the needs of his community during Covid-19.
‘‘It is unsustainable. The patients are amazing, the community is beautiful but they are so sick,’’ Kistemaker said.
Across the country, there were 74 GPs for every 100,000 people, and that was projected to fall to 70 by 2031, the report stated.
There was a strong argument for avoiding this, with a $4 return expected for every dollar spent on training extra GPs, the report said. ‘‘The potential is that the social costs resulting from this shortfall will outweigh fiscal ‘savings’ from not funding this training,’’ it stated.
In other words, ‘‘if you can treat people in the community before they become unwell, there is a big cost saving’’, Betty said.
Kistemaker said one of the doctors at his practice wanted to retire a year-and-a-half ago but stayed because he felt he could not turn his back on patients.
Attracting younger GPs to fill vacancies was a huge challenge, he said.
‘‘We get semi-retirees from Napier, Hastings or from other parts of the country, and they come here for the lifestyle and they expect not to work hard, with respect. And that is a problem because it is hard work here.’’
All of this is despite efforts to change this in rural communities. The University of Otago rural medical immersion programme, which began in 2007, and attaches final year medical students to family practices and hospitals in seven spots around the country, including Wairarapa and Tararua.
‘‘Obviously the hope is they will see the joys and challenges of working in rural areas, and might hope to eventually make their career here,’’ Dr Helen Clayson, regional co-ordinator for the programme inWairarapa, said.