Rural health snapshot ‘confronting’, minister says

Tuesday, 28 May 2024

• New research from the Rural Health Network shows large gaps in rural healthcare provision.

• Minister for Rural Communities Mark Patterson says the government is listening to the sector.

• The Rural Health Network says, as the country’s biggest contributors to production, its vital that rural communities are healthy and well.

Kiwis living rurally have significantly higher mortality rates from preventable causes and alarmingly high rates of suicide, new research shows.

Hauora Taiwhenua Rural Health Network’s 2024 snapshot shows rural people are falling behind in almost every metric they’ve measured so far; and the more rurally they live, the worse their comparable health.

The report found Māori younger than 30 living remotely were twice as likely to die of preventable causes than their urban counterparts, while non-Māori aged 30 to 44 living rurally were 1.8 times more likely to die of a preventable cause.

Suicide rates for males aged 15 to 44 are 64% higher in rural areas than in cities.

Minister for rural communities Mark Patterson called the report “sobering and confronting”.

“Rural health provision is under extreme pressure and rural health out lagging urban comparators,” he said.

“We are listening carefully to the sector as we set about turning these outcomes around.”

In 2022, academics from Otago and Waikato universities developed a geographical definition of rurality for health purposes, which the Rural Health Network said finally enabled the sector to compare the health outcomes of those living in rural areas with those in or near cities.

According to the report, one in five Kiwis live in rural areas that were responsible for producing more than 80% of Aotearoa’s export earning; so it’s important that they’re healthy and well.

Rural communities scored lower across metrics like unemployment, income, home ownership, education, access to cellphones and internet, vaccination rates and health risk factors.

Many of these statistics are worse for Māori living in rural areas.

Half of rural general practices have an unacceptably high GP to patient ratio and almost 60% were advertising a GP vacancy in June 2023, the report said.

“These findings are an indictment on the low priority that has been given to the health and wellbeing of rural people by this and previous Governments,” Hauora Taiwhenua chair Dr Fiona Bolden said.

The network presented the report to Patterson and Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey in early May, before releasing it publicly on Friday.

Bolden called on Government to prioritise rural families in future budgets and planning.

“It is long past the time for rhetoric. We need to see action and priority given to funding the higher cost of health delivery in rural and remote parts of New Zealand.”

Delivery was further complicated by social deprivation and the large percentage of over 65-year-olds who live rurally, she said.

The network made it clear that telehealth wasn’t a solution when only 74.2% of rural households had access to internet and only 64.6% of some communities had access to a mobile phone, Bolden said.

Hauora Taiwhenua chief executive Dr Grant Davidson said the network had offered to work with government on more appropriate solutions to start reversing these outcomes.

“We will look to hold this and future Governments to account for clear strategies and targeted funding so that the health of our rural people is not continued to be neglected,” he said.