Ele Ludemann: Primary failures pressure secondary services

GPs are warning of a collapse in primary healthcare:

A group representing GPs has issued a bleak assessment of the state of primary healthcare in New Zealand, saying “the concept of a family doctor is dead”, and the Government must act before there’s wider health sector collapse. . .

The comments from the advocacy group General Practitioners Aotearoa (GPA) were made following revelations in the Herald that patients were queuing from 6am outside a GP and urgent care clinic in Ōtara.

Patients waited at the clinic hours before it opened, telling the Herald they turned up early in the cold because of long wait times and difficulty getting appointments with other GPs, whose books were full.

The GPA’s interim chairman Dr Buzz Burrell said the Herald’s video story was shocking and should serve as a wake-up call for all of New Zealand and the Government. . .

“The primary healthcare system is sick. The concept of a family doctor is already dead. Patients all over the country have to wait weeks to see a doctor at their usual clinic, and even then, they’re unlikely to see their regular doctor.”

True family medicine involved continuity of care, where a patient could see the same GP over and over when they needed to, Burrell said.

“I think it’s so close to dead that we might as well call it out for what it is. There are pockets of hope, but they’re getting less and less and less. It’s a frightening statement and it’s really sad.” . .

It isn’t only Auckland where there’s a GP shortage.

A friend in Wanaka phoned his GP for an appointment and was told he’d have to wait four weeks.

Another friend phoned her GP in Oamaru and when the nurse listened to her symptoms told her there were no appointments that day, she should go to the emergency department at the local hospital.

She went and waited eight hours to be seen and given a prescription by which time the pharmacy was closed and by the time she got the antibiotics next day her condition had worsened.

This is just one example of how when primary healthcare fails it puts pressure on secondary services and people’s health deteriorates.

“Eventually, we are going to have a tipping point where we will have so few GPs that people are going to be overwhelming the emergency departments.”

He said if just 6% of patients went to emergency departments (EDs) instead of their local doctor, this would double ED presentations.

“That’s a really alarming statistic. It shows how close we are to a secondary sector collapse.” . .

People who don’t get timely primary healthcare get sicker. Later diagnosis can make treatment more difficult, and expensive, lead to lower quality of life and can be fatal.

The problem hasn’t happened overnight, it’s been caused by successive governments that haven’t adequately funded primary services nor planned for population growth and an aging population.

It won’t be solved overnight either and until it is, the pressure on primary and secondary services will grow.

People won’t be able to get to a GP when they need to, if they do they might not see one who knows them and their history, and if they don’t they might be forced to go to ED under their own steam, or call an ambulance, putting more strain on those already overstretched services too.

Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.