Source: Radio New Zealand
GenPro, the association for general practice owners, has called for all political parties to consider investing more in primary healthcare. 123rf
GPs are calling for more funding and more accurate ways of allocating it, to ensure practices aren’t losing money.
The government has recently announced a new method of determining the level of funding GPs qualify for to provide care for their patients.
Some practices will have higher numbers of patients with complex needs than others.
But GenPro, the association for general practice owners, has called for all political parties to consider investing more in primary healthcare, ahead of the election later this year.
They want a minimum increase in general practice funding of 30 percent over three years, and an increase in investment in primary care from the current six percent of total health funding up to 14, in-line with international WHO/OECD benchmarks.
The goal is to improve patient access, reduce hospital pressure, support the healthcare workforce, and restore financial sustainability to general practice.
Currently, chair Dr Angus Chambers explained, the main sources of income for GPs came from the government, called capitation funding, which flowed from the government, through Health NZ, then Primary Health Organisations (PHOs) and into GPs.
Dr Angus Chambers Supplied
The amount they received annually per person was determined by HNZ, and calculated using estimates of how much care someone would need based on age and sex, with the shortfall topped up by patient fees.
But from July 1, the government will add more specific age bands, multimorbidity (when people have two or more chronic conditions), rurality (how close people are to urban areas) and socioeconomic deprivation to the equation.
Chambers said he understood there were 1024 variables possible under the reweighting. “You might be rural, but not deprived, you might be female, and this age.” Health NZ was in charge of determining a person’s need based on those.
Ethnicity would not be included, which Chambers said was “problematic”.
“Ethnicity is related to need in our system at the moment, unfortunately,” he said. “That would be something I would urge them to reconsider.”
These days, patients were costing more on average to treat – more services were being pushed out of hospitals onto GPs, there were more treatments and tests available to people, and the population was ageing, making its needs more complex, Chambers explained.
“The current system that’s used tends to under-estimate the cost pressures,” he said.
A report prepared by Sapere in 2022 estimated GP practices made a cumulative loss of $137 million each year, or 7.6 percent.
That left patients shouldering higher costs, Chambers said.
Receiving more money per patient would mean GPs could afford to spend more time with complex cases.
“For too long, general practice has been expected to absorb rising costs and growing patient demand without adequate investment,” Chambers said. “If we want affordable, accessible healthcare for New Zealanders, we must strengthen the frontline of the system.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand