$380m city med school would churn out hundreds of doctors

Thursday, 6 July 2023

Training would be compressed into four years at a future Waikato medical school which will be "a fantastic legacy for New Zealand", National Party leader Christopher Luxon said. (First published July 6 2023.)

National leader Christopher Luxon is welcoming being seen by a doctor from a newly revived Waikato medical school, calling it “a pretty special day”.

Luxon pledged the party’s support for New Zealand’s third medical school to be based at Waikato University should the party win October’s election.

Luxon revived the proposed medical school on Wednesday morning, confirming that work would begin on the project on “October 16” should they be in Government.

The proposal first appeared in 2016 when Waikato University and the then Waikato District Health Board announced a joint bid to establish the school to meet a shortage of GPs.

Luxon said the existing proposal was well advanced and was of high quality, that it made sense to back it given the current shortage of medics.

“The best day to do this is actually yesterday, and the next best opportunity is today, so we don’t need any more delays.”

The programme would turn out qualified GPs after a four year post-graduate degree, with 120 in the first intake.

Waikato University’s professor of population health Ross Lawrenson said a shortage of doctors was long forecast.

Luxon said construction would need to start as soon as possible to have the school up and running by 2027, which would coincide with getting accreditation.

“There’s a lot to do but there’s no reason not to do it. “

Confirmation of the proposal, first aired on Wednesday in the Waikato Times, comes after Labour revealed the country is short by 1700 doctors, 4800 nurses, and hundreds of other medical specialists.

National health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti was confident the people to teach medical students, especially since some of the programme will be based in rural areas.

“Part of the proposal is if you train in places you stay in places…So we will be looking to use trainers from medical centres and general practices.”

Luxon didn’t expect opposition from Auckland and Otago medical schools as previously.

Christopher Luxon announced National is backing a third medical school.

“We are all in this together. We all know we are 1700 doctors short in this country and what we are doing is increasing the cap of students that want to go into medicine. It’s not about competing against other schools they will all have different strengths.”

National will add a further 50 training places across Auckland and Otago’s schools – meaning an extra 220 doctors graduating each year by 2030.

University of Waikato Vice-Chancellor Professor Neil Quigley got his fist pump moment when Luxon announced the policy on Wednesday morning.

National’s Shane Reti and Christopher Luxon with Waikato University Vice-Chancellor Professor Neil Quigley.

“Even in the process leading up to the day this has been a discussion going on for quite a period of time but you never quite know when you are at the point that it’s definite as opposed to just a conversation, so really the fist pump moment is today.”

Quigley said he has been working with Shane Reti over the past six to nine months.

“In politics big things often take a while to come through because everything is about a coalition of interest so you need to paint the picture and talk to people over quite a period of time and let different groups of people understand how something would be good for them.”

B Block is likely to be demolished if the medical school is built.

And while the medical school has been touted for sometime, Quigley doesn’t think of previous efforts as false starts.

“Because having not done that work seven years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to say when they asked me how much it cost? And those types of things.“

Capital costs to set up the Waikato med school are expected to be about $380m, with the Crown contributing up to $280 million (pending a final business case) and Waikato University raising the rest.

Dr Keith Buswell as been a rural GP in Te Kūiti for the past 36 years and is welcoming more doctors coming to join him in the rural areas.

That is $100m the university would have to stump up with, which Quigley believes it’s a sensible target.

“Over five years I think we will find that level of support around the community.”

The physical home of the med school would be built where B Block, slated for demolition, now sits.

The university’s Professor in Population Health, Ross Lawrenson said there is a serious need to be teaching new doctors.

“It’s been very frustrating as we were projecting the shortage of doctors by 2030 and every year there is a delay starting the training. It will take another 10 years before doctors are coming out the other end.”

Lawrenson said the general practice shortage ended up causing the backlogs at hospitals.

“We have 4000 GPs in this country and just over 4000 specialists so our medical schools need to be turning out doctors in equal numbers…Only one in five are becoming GPs.”

Te Kūiti GP, Keith Buswell, is enthusiastic to have a third medical school that concentrates on rural training.

“The present system we’ve got with the two medical schools trying to encourage medical placements for doctors hasn’t worked very well. And we need to take a fresh look at it, and this is an obvious way to do it.”