17 February 2011

New Zealand Medical Workforce Reaching Critical Levels With DHBs Unable to Respond

The New Zealand medical workforce is reaching critically understaffed levels and the DHBs seem unable to respond effectively to ensure adequate healthcare is provided to New Zealanders.

As reported in the New Zealand Herald recently, hospitals such as Palmerston North’s cancer treatment centre are having to cut services due to a shortage of doctors, doctors are handling “extremely unsafe” workloads such as at Starship where they have less than half the required doctors, and specialists are leaving New Zealand for better conditions overseas.

Despite this crisis the DHBs’ funding to employ doctors appears to have been reduced rather than increased, which is further exacerbating the problem.

In 2010 the rates New Zealand hospitals could pay locum doctors to meet their shorter-term needs were capped at significantly lower levels than those same doctors can earn in Australia.

When asked what effect this has had Dr Sam Hazledine, the managing director or Australasia’s fastest growing medical recruitment agency, MedRecruit, reported “We’ve had over a 300% increase in doctors heading to Australia to work where they can often earn more than twice as much as they could in New Zealand. Often doctors come to MedRecruit to locum for a lifestyle change, and want to stay in New Zealand. Often there are hospitals with vacancies that need locums, but increasingly hospitals report they don’t have the budget to pay them as locums.”

Dr Hazledine goes on to say “I have no doubt that the staffing departments in the DHBs are doing the best they can with the resources they have, but without the funding it’s impossible to compete with the much higher pay and better conditions on offer in Australia.

“We can’t afford to view our healthcare system in isolation with Australia; as far as the doctors see it, it’s a single market. I believe the hospitals need the funding to be able to invest in the doctors they so desperately need to provide adequate medical services. I think it’s also important for hospitals to communicate their needs to agencies like MedRecruit, because often we’ll hear things in the media like services being cut due to a lack of doctors before we even hear of the shortage, or we’ll be contacted directly by doctors in understaffed departments. We’re here to help them and that’s what we want to do.”

ENDS

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