Defunding hospitals to fund general practice is good health policy, according to General Practitioners Aotearoa (GPA).
This week, The Post broke a story that the Government funded its $95-million-a-year general practice boost by reducing the budget for hospitals and other specialist services.
GPA spokesperson Dr Buzz Burrell says the research is clear.
“For every $1 spent in general practice, the health system saves $13 down the line. That’s just good investment.”
Burrell says governments too often treat the symptoms, rather than the cause of ailments to the health system.
“It’s too easy for the Government to say ‘oh look, emergency departments are overcrowded, let’s firehose more money into ED,’ when actually giving more resources to GPs would prevent a lot of people from turning up to ED in the first place.
“It’s actually refreshing to see funding shifted in our direction.”
Diverting funding to general practice is economically and ethically sound.
“A system that waits for people to get sick before they’re treated can hardly be called a ‘health’ system,” Burrell says.
In an ideal world, more funds would be available for hospitals and general practice.
“Everyone knows the health system as a whole is chronically underfunded,” Burrell says. “I’d love to see the pie get bigger, rather than just finding new and interesting ways to cut it up.”
The biggest problem with the funding changes, Burrell says, is that it’s too little, and poorly spent.
“General practice needs more money, and it needs to be spent smartly,” he says.
There are not enough working GPs to service the New Zealand population.
“Estimates are that we’re about 2000 GPs short,” Burrell says. “The good news is we can plug a lot of that gap very easily with the workforce we already have in New Zealand.”
Half of GPs plan to retire in the next 10 years, 17% are planning to leave New Zealand, many are planning to change specialty and many work part time.
“GPs work hard, and they feel under-valued,” Burrell says. “Smartly diverting just a little funding to improving working conditions would go a long way to keeping them in the workforce, and attracting new ones in.”
