Another 100 Public Hospital Specialists Needed Each Year

MEDIA STATEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE,
WEDNESDAY 14 JANUARY 2015

Another 100 Public Hospital Specialists Needed Each Year Says ASMS

“District health boards needs to recruit 100 extra hospital specialists over and above what they already do if they wants to continue providing quality health care,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

“ASMS analysis of workforce information shows that while the specialist workforce is growing each year, it is well short of what is needed to meet growing health needs. We need to significantly increase recruitment of hospital specialists, by about 100 a year, in order for public hospitals to continue functioning properly in the future.”

While there is no universally agreed way to determine a nation’s need for medical specialists, in 2010 the country’s district health boards (DHBs) and the ASMS agreed to use Australia as a benchmark. Australia’s population is of a similar age structure to New Zealand’s; we have a roughly similar balance of hospital specialists to general practitioners (GPs), and a similar number of nurses per population.

“It is also fair to say that most New Zealanders expect our public services, such as health and education, to be at least on a par with those in Australia,” say Mr Powell.

Workforce data indicate Australia will have an estimated 1.5 specialists per 1000 population by the year 2021. For New Zealand to be on a par with Australia by that time, this country will need about 7,300 specialists in total, including around 6,060 DHB-employed specialists. Currently we’re on track to have just over 5,300 DHB specialists.

“In reality, we probably need even more than this number as New Zealand’s health needs are greater than Australia’s based on key health measures such as cardiovascular disease, cancer mortality, infant mortality and diabetes prevalence.

“So 100 extra specialists a year is actually a conservative measure and we’re failing to meet even that.

“Our public health system is creaking and straining under increased workload pressures, entrenched specialist shortages, the impact of an aging population, more chronic illness, and greater government expectations.”

Mr Powell called on Health Minister Jonathan Coleman to publicly acknowledge that entrenched workforce shortages are one of the top problems facing health in this country, and noted that this had already been recognised by the Government’s Health Workforce New Zealand agency.

In a report on The Role of Health Workforce New Zealand, released in November, it wrote:

While the Taskforce initially focused on the immediate postgraduate period, it has now adopted a whole-of-career perspective. The most important issue currently is the impact of a prolonged period of medical labour shortages on the workloads, wellbeing and productivity of DHB-employed senior doctors. Other areas under consideration, some of which are directly related, include the distribution and long-term retention, including retirement intentions, of doctors trained in New Zealand and overseas.

ENDS

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