But input from rural health professionals has to be included in its design if it is to succeed in delivering proper healthcare to those areas of the country, Rural GP Network chief executive Grant Davidson said.
He says it has lots of potential, but there is no detail around how it will be implemented in such a short timeframe.
“There is so much to do in such an aggressive timeline, the risk is that we get it wrong and we have got to get it right,” Davidson said.
To ensure this, network representatives have to be there to work with the Government to ensure a rural lens is put over the new system’s implementation.
“We have got to have people around the table designing the system as it gets down on the ground, otherwise we’re going to get forgotten again. Those 700,000 rural people deserve a good system,” he said.
Davidson says he was excited there was going to be radical change as the current health system is not working for rural areas.
The reform will see all DHBs replaced by a new Crown entity, Health New Zealand, which will be responsible for running hospitals and commissioning primary and community health services. It will have four regional divisions.
A new Māori Health Authority will be created that will have the power to commission health services, monitor the state of Māori health and develop policy.
Davidson says until the new system is put in place, stopgap measures over the next few years will be needed to ensure rural health is adequately resourced.
It costs more money to service rural areas because of its remoteness and he hoped the reforms included better funding for rural health services, such as midwife or mental health services.
If this was achieved, it will help prevent the long hours rural people had to travel for a 15-minute appointment at a hospital in the city.
“That’s what equality is. If we’re going to have equitable outcomes, we have to have inequitable inputs to get there,” he said.
The reforms also include locality planning, which are the formation of groups within a community of like-minded people and organisations.
He says some of those localities needed to be specific to rural areas to ensure it retained a voice.
“That’s our challenge and the opportunity that sits in front of us,” he said.
Those localities would then feed information back to its nearest regional division.
“What we don’t want is an urban area tied to rural groups because always the rural groups miss out,” he said.
Health Minister Andrew Little says the two of the main drivers of health sector reforms are to put a greater emphasis on primary healthcare and ensuring fairer access for all New Zealanders.
“We are going to put the emphasis squarely on primary and community healthcare and will do away with duplication and unnecessary bureaucracy between regions, so that our health workers can do what they do best – keep people well,” Little said.
“The reforms will mean that for the first time, we will have a truly national health system, and the kind of treatment people get will no longer be determined by where they live.”
Rural Women New Zealand (RWNZ) president Gill Naylor says she wanted to see in practice what Little meant by that comment.
“RWNZ expects to see a rural health and wellbeing strategy, which is fully resourced and funded to ensure rural postcodes aren’t in the losing lottery,” Naylor said.
“It is our expectation that the detail will also include a solid mechanism for including the voice of rural women, children and communities in decision-making by the new national health service.”
Naylor says the reforms should include a rural and gender impact analysis before too much further work is done, to test if there will be any adverse impact on rural communities, and women and girls in particular.
“Our expectation is that the outcome of these major changes is an equal playing field for the health and wellbeing needs of rural communities alongside that provided for our urban counterparts,” she said.
The reforms will be phased in over three years, to make sure existing services – including the roll-out of the covid-19 vaccination programme – are not disrupted.
