The "accountability-free" funding for general practice is fueling the decline in GP work hours and the significant decrease in the GP-to-population ratio, according to new report.

I wonder when NZ will move away from the quasi-free-market-but-funded-by-the-government system in health (and education). It leads to outcomes like this which are clearly inefficient. I’d like to see more centralisation.

  • @DaveMA
    6•11 months ago

    Primary health organisations and their general practices are paid according to the number of people enrolled - not the number of times they see them.

    "Human behaviour predictably will be to enrol as many people as possible who will never come in and see you, and to make yourself unavailable.

    I presume the idea was that you get base funding for the number enrolled, then charge a fee to cover appointments. But they have a point, it comes across as a bit WTF in the current environment.

    • @eagleeyedtigerEnglish
      5•11 months ago

      Honestly we couldn’t get into a good GP practice when we moved about 5 years ago, they were pretty much all not taking new enrolments. In fact the one that we did want to enrol at is still not taking new patients.

      Some of them are now really strict and enforce time limits for appointments, not allowed to bring up more than one issue unless you make a double appointment. We had an amazing GP when my first daughter was born, always took time to answer any questions and never rushed us and gave lots of recommendations to look at.

      Since moving away we haven’t had great experiences through a few different practices.

      • @DaveMA
        3•11 months ago

        Yeah I think that’s becoming a more common experience. A lack of doctors makes things pretty difficult.