Advocacy

The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners has published its submission on the government’s Health and Disability System Review.

The College’s submission

In preparing the submission, the College sought member feedback via via Te Akoranga a Māui (its Māori representative group), Faculties and Chapters and professional interest groups.

The College’s overarching message is that much more needs to be done to remove inequity from the health system.

Recommendations

1. Ministry of Health to ensure that the ethnicity of the providers or patients is not a detrimental factor for funding or monitoring any health and disability contracts for service.
2. Cultural competence and cultural safety training are core requirements for all health and disability workers. 
3. Implement a national system designed to deliver equitable outcomes, supported by cross-party political agreement for the direction of New Zealand’s health and disability system. 
4. Implement infrastructure that enables providers at different levels to be able to talk to each other, eg: a single national, electronic health record.
5. Review district health board boundaries according to current population health needs and population mobility information. 
6. Appropriately fund different approaches and resources to achieve equitable health outcomes. 
7. Investigate and remedy the current shortfall of vocationally registered general practitioners, rural hospital doctors and other health professionals in order to meet current demand for services, and also to make recommendations to future-proof New Zealand’s medical workforce in light of the high numbers that will retire in the next 10 years.
8. Create and implement a single definition of urban and rural for universal use within New Zealand’s health and disability system. 
9. Investigate the mobile, technology-based and outreach services provided to rural populations to gauge their effectiveness in reducing health inequities in those communities. 
10. Implement the proposed National Interprofessional School of Rural Health. 

Our submission 

Further information