Your local GP practice is highly efficient at diagnosing, treating and managing health conditions and also preventing illnesses from occurring before they require expensive specialist intervention. Research abroad shows every dollar invested in primary care can save up to $13 in healthcare expenditure.
Treating conditions early is less expensive than addressing them later. A minor infection treated by a GP costs a fraction of what sepsis requiring hospitalisation would cost.
Lack of GP access forces patients to emergency departments, overwhelming them nationwide. An ED visit costs the health system around $650, compared to around $50 for a GP consultation, a financial haemorrhage hiding in plain sight.
International studies show that for every additional ten GPs per 100,000 population, there are 40 fewer hospitalisations annually. This could save millions each year.
"Continuity of care" – consistently seeing the same doctor – operates like any successful business relationship. The established trust and accumulated knowledge create remarkable efficiencies. Doctors avoid unnecessary test duplication, make quicker diagnoses, and improve treatment compliance. Patients with good continuity of care are 16% less likely to visit the emergency department.
Break this relationship, and both health outcomes and economic benefits crumble.
Former PM Sir Bill English's "Social Investment” philosophy fits perfectly here: invest early to avoid costly downstream consequences.
While technology promises future efficiencies, many GP practices still use fax machines to transfer records. We cannot build a digital healthcare system on analog infrastructure.
The fragmentation of health information systems has real costs: critical results get delayed, treatments duplicated, and errors occur. A patient-centred information system would yield substantial efficiency gains.
The Government's focus on primary care is heading in the right direction, but these announcements are merely the opening chapter in a much longer story. Strengthening primary care is not just good medicine – it is good business.
The return on investment could be extraordinary. But only if we get the fundamentals right.
Lack of GP access forces patients to emergency departments, overwhelming them nationwide. An ED visit costs the health system around $650, compared to around $50 for a GP consultation, a financial haemorrhage hiding in plain sight.
International studies show that for every additional ten GPs per 100,000 population, there are 40 fewer hospitalisations annually. This could save millions each year.
"Continuity of care" – consistently seeing the same doctor – operates like any successful business relationship. The established trust and accumulated knowledge create remarkable efficiencies. Doctors avoid unnecessary test duplication, make quicker diagnoses, and improve treatment compliance. Patients with good continuity of care are 16% less likely to visit the emergency department.
Break this relationship, and both health outcomes and economic benefits crumble.
Former PM Sir Bill English's "Social Investment” philosophy fits perfectly here: invest early to avoid costly downstream consequences.
While technology promises future efficiencies, many GP practices still use fax machines to transfer records. We cannot build a digital healthcare system on analog infrastructure.
The fragmentation of health information systems has real costs: critical results get delayed, treatments duplicated, and errors occur. A patient-centred information system would yield substantial efficiency gains.
The Government's focus on primary care is heading in the right direction, but these announcements are merely the opening chapter in a much longer story. Strengthening primary care is not just good medicine – it is good business.
The return on investment could be extraordinary. But only if we get the fundamentals right.
Dr Prabani Wood’s research report, The Heart of Healthcare, was published 3 April.
Prabani Wood obtained her medical degree and BA in Physiological Sciences from the University of Oxford. She emigrated to New Zealand with her husband in 2005. This article was first published HERE
3 comments:
Prabani, it's all very well to come on here, throw a few figures around and tell us that the health system is 'fragmented'. Wow, who could have guessed that one?
So here's one for you, the average cost to become a doctor is $420,000, apparently a large chunk of that $420k is funded by the good tax paying citizen. That's a lot of money spent (420k) and time spent (6 or so years) to tell me something that is more obvious than the nose on my face. Please go away and put that large expense to good use and tell us that the broken system can and will be fixed. And how. Become the solution.
Here's another stat for you, there's only 2 people in this country who doesn't think the health system is broken, they have said it on TV, they are ardern and hipkins. The other 4.99999 million of us believe differently. It also doesn't appear to be getting any better. Although apparently the race based criteria has been undone now.
Looking forward to your part 2 on the solution.....
I am sceptical of the 13 for 1 saving claimed for primary care. With all expenses counted I wonder how the "for maori by maori providers measure. Do they increase their effectiveness by offending fellow tribesmen/women by seriously discouraging smoking, alcohol, drugs or obesity with its consequent colossal diabetes bill? Nevertheless primary care is in dire need of support. Compared with accountants, lawyers, engineers, GPs seem woefully unrewarded. Most of the public can dodge direct contact with all the former in most of their life dealings, but cannot avoid Drs. Direct realistic full payments would never be generally acceptable in NZ, and certainly not by pandered maori. Large discounts for the non frugal as now seem unfair. With employement opportunities world wide, and high top range of income as effectively set by America, seems no alternative to colossal state subsidy. It greatly irks me to see the very able and congenitally indusrtious offspring of colleagues obliged to study overseas because they have been displaced from university here by some far less able trace maori.
Medicine is one of many professions where DEI places in university have no place whatever. It is the best and brightest who should get the training, no matter what their enthnicty. The human body does not differ between races, and pandering to cultural mores does not make one a better doctor. If you ate good enough, you will succeed. Scholarships should be given only for financial need
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