acute shortage of GPs<\/a> in New Zealand, which needed another 500 to 1000 family doctors to be on par with Australia, he said.<\/p>\n“The solution is not funding private companies to make money out of patients phoning them up instead of their doctors – it’s getting more doctors on the front-line.”<\/p>\n
Research had shown that patients who had the same GP for five years, lived four years longer on average, and had 30 percent fewer referrals to secondary services, Burrell said.<\/p>\n
“I recall very well in deed having one Telehealth consult during COVID with a patient I knew well, and I said ‘Gosh, I have to see you next week’, and I did.<\/p>\n
“What they had called me about was one problem, but what I saw was a pale person who had lost weight. And to cut a long story short he had his bowel cancer resected three months later.<\/p>\n
“That would have been completely missed had he been seen by one doctor who he’d never seen before and would never see again. That’s hit and run medicine.”<\/p>\n
General practice had become less attractive as a speciality with the shrinking level of capitation funding, the money paid to practices for each enrolled patient, with up to 40 percent of practices struggling to stay financially viable.<\/p>\n
Digital healthcare providers said however the Telehealth service should bring more equitable access to GPs across the country.<\/p>\n
The Digital Health Association chair Tony Wai told the Nine to Noon many GPs offered online appointments but not 24-hour coverage.<\/p>\n
“It will hopefully pick up a number of the unenrolled who don’t have a current GP and we know a number of those individuals have been winding up in ED across the country, and that’s clogging up the hospital system.<\/p>\n
“Trying to get immediate access to a doctor is going to be crucial upfront, there will be a number of people using it who will be in major distress in that point of time and getting them immediate access is much easier.”<\/p>\n
Wai said it would take less time to get access to a doctor and reduce the overall wait times.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"General practice has become less attractive as a speciality with the shrinking level of capitation funding and money…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[1816,9409,105,4348,12,196,10975,10973,10974,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-138269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-podcasts","14":"tag-public-radio","15":"tag-radio-new-zealand","16":"tag-rnz","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114584739139813446","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}