GP honoured, warns of health funding

Otago Daily Times

3 days ago

A nationally honoured Southland GP is concerned about government funding focus on virtual and after-hours treatment as opposed to the face-to-face, personalised care her practice can offer.
Dr Glenys Weir, who was awarded a King's Service Medal on Monday, said she was worried about the government prioritising its funding to after-hours and telehealth care over much needed support and training of GPs.
Last month, in a pre-budget announcement, Minister of Health Simeon Brown committed $164 million in funding to urgent and after-hours healthcare in the regions.
The following week, Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora confirmed its plans for a new 24-7 virtual telehealth service, set to go live as early as this month.
"All the money's gone to after-hours [and] telehealth," Dr Weir said. "It's not a solution.
"We knew 10, 15 years ago that we were going to have this crisis in general practice, because it was a decade of not training enough."
She said general practice had changed incredibly and she and her colleagues at Gore Medical Centre were now seeing about 2000 patients per full-time GP.
These days, she said you would not see the same GP as much as you would in the past and therefore would not get the same continuity of care.
Only recently, she had seen a patient presenting with a foot problem who actually had an underlying heart issue as well as a range of other issues contributing to poor health.
She said she was able to give him an ECG, prescribe medications and address his other health concerns.
"If it was telehealth, they'd only be dealing with the foot," she said.
Dr Weir joined the medical centre in 1981 and was the first female doctor in the Gore District.
She said she was now treating the fifth generation of some families.
Knowing a patient well means as a practitioner can sense changes and pick up on underlying issues, she said.
"We're well-trained and just pick up so much more," she said.
She said to accommodate the increased workload, GPs were having to work harder, doing the more serious tasks while easier ones were being delegated to nurses, who had really stepped up.
The doctor received her royal honour this week for her services to health, and had volunteered her service to rural health days, offering free consultations for health screening and promotion.
She also had a little clinic in the Plunket rooms out in Waikaka, where she would see a lot of young mothers and do immunisations.
Now, she said rural patients were more inclined to travel into town to visit the centre, as they were coming and going more frequently.
Despite the increased workload, she was still encouraged by the calibre of GPs she saw coming through, particularly the group of young people that were committed locally.
Still working part-time at the centre, she said due to the quality of these young doctors, she felt comfortable retiring probably by the end of the year.
She accepted the award on behalf of her team, those who had come before her and those who were the future of the practice, because she could not have done this alone, she said.
"You just can't carry it on your own."
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