John MacDonald: How do you rate the Government's health workforce plan?

How much faith do you have in the Government’s big announcement that it’s finally going to do something about the critical shortage of doctors, nurses and other health professionals?

My quick answer is “not much”. Especially when you consider that it may not be around after October 14.

Current forecasts say we will need nearly 13,000 extra nurses and more than 5,000 more doctors within a decade.

Based on current population growth, an extra 1600 workers are going to be needed every year between now and 2032.

Which means, if nothing changes, we could be short of 25,000 healthcare professionals

So 101 days out from the election, the Government is coming to the rescue and telling us that it’s got it all in hand and has a plan to get things under control with its Health Workforce Plan.

It includes things like expanding the earn-as-you-learn programme, increasing rural training and trying to get nurses back into the health sector. Which all makes sense.

Not sure why it’s taken until now for that lightbulb to go off. Which is pretty much what National’s health spokesperson Dr. Shane Reti was saying yesterday.

The Government’s plan includes 135 new outfits to train people to be paramedics, radiation therapists and pharmacy prescribers.

But how ironic is it that, just hours after the Health Minister was telling us to keep calm and carry on, in Christchurch one of the 24-hour surgeries had to close its doors because it was overwhelmed with patients?

Last night it was so overwhelmed with the number of people turning up for treatment, that it put something up on its Facebook page saying it was closing because of high demand.

And it was telling people that if things were urgent they should call Healthline or go to the Emergency Department at Christchurch Hospital.

This is in New Zealand’s second-largest city on a Tuesday night. Not a Friday night or a Saturday night. Not a Saturday afternoon when there are people out playing sport and banging into eachother and twisting ankles. It was 9 o’clock on a Tuesday night.

Pegasus Health says, because of the number of patients that were there last night, it believed it was “clinically unsafe” to let more people in until they had cleared the backlog.

They say they worked with other providers and the Emergency Department at Christchurch Hospital to ensure people could still get immediate care.

But here’s the clincher: what happened at the Bealey Ave after-hours last night was a first. Pegasus Health has told our newsroom that it’s never had to close the doors there before.

But it says it was the only option to make sure patients were getting “safe quality care”.

Now, I imagine the Health Minister would say something along the lines of this being a very clear example why the Government is doing what it’s doing and why its Health Workforce Plan is the answer.

But, 101 days out from the election, this Health Workforce Plan looks to me like an act of desperation. And that’s why I have very little faith in it.

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