Spotlight put on after-hours care
Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora says it is working with the WellSouth primary health organisation to make sure Southlanders can still get face-to-face medical care after hours.
This comes after the Invercargill Urgent Doctor Society announced last week that it will shut the city’s after-hours practice, Invercargill After Hours Doctors, at the end of March.
Health NZ’s group manager for regional system integration, Cathy O’Malley, said she understood that losing the service would be concerning to Invercargill residents.
“We will work together to carefully assess the best sustainable configuration of services to support access to the right services for our community,” she said.
This work would also take into account how the Southland Hospital emergency department would be affected when there was no after-hours doctor, and how to make sure its ability to provide emergency care wasn’t compromised, she said.
“As we work through the potential impact of the doctors’ service ending, we remind people in Invercargill that there are health options available to them from several existing providers.”
These included phoning a GP; phoning Healthline on 0800 611 611 for free health advice from a registered nurse; phoning PlunketLine on 0800 933 922 for concerns about babies or children; or talking to a pharmacist. Rural patients could use the Ka Ora telehealth service, O’Malley said.
Questions about whether the public health system would roll out a service like Ka Ora to Invercargill residents went unanswered.
However, some practices in the city are signing up with private providers that offer telehealth services to enrolled patients.
At least five Invercargill practices have signed up to Practice Plus.
Face-to-face options after hours in Southland include the Southland Hospital and Gore Hospital emergency departments; urgent services only at the Fiordland Medical Practice until 5pm on Sundays and public holidays; appointments until 7pm at the Invercargill Medical Centre from Mondays to Thursdays; and appointments at He Puna Waiora Wellness Centre on Mondays and Tuesdays.
O’Malley encouraged people with non-critical illnesses to use alternative options before visiting the emergency department.
“As always, our hospital’s emergency department is available to see any patient who requires urgent treatment. The sickest patients are always triaged to be seen first.”
In a statement last week, the Invercargill Urgent Doctor Society said its after-hours service had become unsustainable. General practitioners were increasingly working into the evenings and over weekends to keep up with daytime caseloads, and government funding had not kept pace with inflation, it said.