No GPs for New Zealand by 2025?

Press Release – for immediate release

No GPs for New Zealand by 2025?

Dr John McKinlay of the New England Research Institute (NERI) will deliver the Charles Burns Oration on Monday evening 14 May at the Wellington Clinical School of Medicine. (The Charles Burns Oration is an NZMA Wellington Division event, and open to the public). Earlier in the day Dr John McKinlay will lead a seminar on the likely primary health care service New Zealanders will have available to them in 2025 and beyond. The implications of these changes for the community and consideration of whether these changes will be acceptable to the population will be discussed at the seminar.

New Zealand, as with other developed countries, is facing a medical workforce crisis which needs planning for. Whether New Zealand follows the world trend of having physician assistant/alternatives providing primary health care or physicians (GPs), this workforce needs to be trained and registered/certificated.

Dr John and his wife Dr Sonja McKinlay are New Zealanders by birth, still with strong family links to New Zealand. Together they run NERI, one of the most prestigious medical research units in the world, in Boston. While here in New Zealand to visit family and do some serious fishing, they have volunteered to give some of their time and expertise to discuss the future of primary health care doctoring internationally and look at the likely implications of this for New Zealand and what the New Zealand public may be able to access in the way of primary health care services in twenty years time.

Dr McKinlay argues that in the United States it is the demise of state sponsored funding of primary care that is going to precipitate doctors out of the front line primary care role – there will be ‘cheaper’ physician alternatives screening patients and treating the majority by protocol. The changing nature of the medical care being delivered in the community and the increasing expectations by funders of the use of clinical guidelines are going to lead to a paucity of committed family practitioners.

The public (or those with internet access) are starting to explore their health concerns via the internet. Is this electronic ‘internet diagnosis’ going to work? Is it going to provide treatment? Who will be responsible for any wrong diagnoses?

The medical profession around the world is starting to appreciate the effects of these changes and is expressing concerns about the standard of primary medical care that will in future be available to people in the community.

Professional and community demographics are changing. Current medical graduates are looking for a very different work/life balances to the traditional GP who accepted callout at all hours for ‘their’ patients. There are changes occurring already in the provision of afterhours medical services.
With current medical treatments patients are living longer with more chronic diseases. This makes management more challenging and consultations more complex requiring more skilled practitioners.

New Zealand practitioners at the seminar will ensure that the issues are put in a local context. The issue of workforce development will be raised.

Dr John McKinlay is a catalyst for initiating the debate in New Zealand and we hope to carry the debate on in a variety of fora/forums.

What Primary Health Care Service will we have in New Zealand in 2025?

ENDS

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