Patients waiting weeks for appointments at Waikato GPs

Wednesday, 17 July 2024

Many Waikato practices who were called to ask about wait times were either too busy to talk or didn’t pick up.

Some Waikato patients are waiting up to five weeks to see their preferred doctor as GPs facing funding pressure close their books to new patients.

The number of New Zealanders not enrolled in primary healthcare grew by 123,000 people in the first quarter of this year, according to General Practice Owners Association (GenPro) estimates. That means 290,000 people are not enrolled with their local GP.

GenPro said the estimate was based on Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora data, which showed enrolments falling from 96.8% to 94.4% in the first quarter of 2024.

At Raglan Medical wait times were between one and two weeks for the next available doctor, and up to five weeks for your preferred doctor, business manager Michelle Meenagh said.

Some medical centres are no longer taking on new patients while others face long wait times for appointments.

“However, we still have capacity to see patients urgently each day. These patients go on a triage list and are initially managed by our nursing team.”

She said the practice was “extremely busy” with standard medical appointments and winter illnesses, “and it’s worth mentioning the recent supply issues with oestradiol (oestrogen) patches meant we had to find capacity to provide consults for patients currently on this medication, which in turn impacted on the availability of doctor consults.”

Matamata Medical Centre employed nine GPs with most of them booked out for the week ahead and into the following week, operations and finance manager Tim Hillier said.

‘Working conditions in one part of the system are so much better than those in another part of the same system,’ Pinnacle clinical director Dr Jo Scott-Jones said.

The centre saw, on average, about 70 to 75 patients a day through its urgent walk-in clinic, Hillier said - but was still accepting new patients who live in Matamata.

Of the dozen other regional general practices called by the Waikato Times for comment, all were too busy to answer questions, or did not pick up at all. Several Hamilton general practices also did not respond to requests for comment.

Dr Jo Scott-Jones, Pinnacle’s clinical director, said all practices were able to provide same day urgent cover for those who needed it but waiting times for routine appointments varied “from a few days to several weeks”.

Pinnacle is the Primary Health Organisation (PHO) for nearly half a million people enrolled with 88 practices in Tairāwhiti, Taranaki, Rotorua, Taupō-Tūrangi, Thames-Coromandel and Waikato.

“The long waiting times for routine appointments are the result of 20 years of underfunding and lack of workforce planning and support by consecutive governments,” Scott-Jones said.

Clinics said they could take urgent patients, but the wait was longer for others, especially if the patient wanted a particular doctor.

Scott-Jones also said there had been an increase in practices no longer accepting new patients and the whole system had been impacted by staff shortages as “every part of the system is interlinked and interdependent”.

“It is harder and harder to retain and attract staff when working conditions in one part of the system are so much better than those in another part of the same system.

“Competition with hospital and specialist services as a result of pay inequity is a significant contributor to workforce shortages.”

Not all general practices are experiencing long wait times and Hamilton East Medical Centre is an example. General manager Lorraine Muir said the clinic had recently recruited a new doctor, which had alleviated the pressure common around this time of year.

The Times spoke to Jan Reddy, 65, as she waited in her car to see a doctor at Tui Medical’s Hamilton central practice. Reddy said she regularly visits the practice and had seen the lines for the drop-in only clinic increase “ten-fold” in recent times.

Tui Medical Centre on Victoria Street is a drop-in only service.

The central clinic’s drop-in service runs between 9am and 12pm, and 1pm to 4pm, Monday to Friday.

“I had to wait here two hours and then because I’m… non-urgent, even though I’ve been under this practice for a while, had to wait in there for two hours.”

“So usually there's about 35 people and sometimes they say, look, we can't see everybody because I've only got a certain amount. But they did take on a few other doctors, which relieved it a bit.”

Reddy said she was considering moving to another practice because of the long lines and because people waiting to see seen can sometimes be aggressive, but said the service is free for members.

Dr Angus Chambers, chairperson of GenPro, said the association believed about half of general practices have closed their books to new patients and warned the number of people not enrolled with a local GP will increase without significant funding changes and regulation.

Chambers said long wait times had been going on for a while now but it had never been as bad as it is now to not only see a doctor but to enrol, and it really came down to workforce which in turn was intimately related to funding and poor policy from successive governments.

Costs increases and GP shortages coupled with a growing and ageing population, and higher community health needs, meant demand for primary healthcare is outstripping supply, according to GenPro.

The association is calling for a greater percentage of the $30 billion health budget to be directed to frontline services in primary care and an urgent review of regulations which restrict general practices from adjusting their co-payments.