This would help address the chronic worker shortages in rural healthcare, he told rural health professionals at the National Rural Health Conference in Taupō.
“My expectation is that the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand will work with you and your communities to ensure the voice of rural communities is reflected in how we plan and manage our national workforce,” Little said.
“A key part of addressing rural workforce challenges is ensuring rural people are well represented in the leadership of our health and disability system.”
There are long-standing health workforce shortages in rural areas in NZ. More than 40% of NZ’s medical workforce is made up of international medical graduates (IMGs), and it’s been like that for more than a decade, which is particularly acute in rural settings.
“Right now, initiatives such as the increase in rural GP training places, our rural immersion education programmes and support for locum relief are all designed to help fix it. But we still need to do more to ensure a sustainable rural workforce in the future,” he said.
“We need to recruit and retain doctors in rural areas to address the long-standing maldistribution of the medical workforce across NZ.”
NZ’s future health system will have a national focus on workforce planning – and the MoH and Health NZ will be much better placed to work with rural communities on innovative solutions and improved education pathways.
“I want to see more rural New Zealanders given the opportunity to join our health workforce, and to be well supported to train and work in their communities,” he said.
That included leadership opportunities.
Little says many of the required actions identified by the rural health sector to improve health services overlapped with the Government’s reforms.
These included equitable health outcomes for rural Māori, a greater focus on using technology to deliver care digitally and a much more integrated health system.
Nearly a fifth, or 19.4%, of New Zealanders live in rural places, and this proportion was expected to grow slightly over the next 20 years.
“We know that rural people have worse health outcomes, the Health and Disability System Review told us, and it’s what I hear from healthcare workers. The situation is worse for rural Māori and people with disabilities,” he said.
He says there are challenges in ensuring rural communities have consistent and comprehensive healthcare.
“Distance, travel costs, time and poorly coordinated appointment times are all significant barriers,” he said.
Mental health challenges and access to health and support services in rural areas also remain a priority, and $455 million has been committed to improving access and choice of primary mental health services.
The future system will be driven by a population-health approach and will use data to understand what people need from health services in their local areas. It will work with the Māori Health Authority to tailor services for local communities to meet the needs of different populations, and to provide services in a way that ensures equitable access for all people.
Little also saw scope to improve the technology used in rural health. The health system currently used 120 different IT systems, most of which did not talk to each other. The reforms will provide a new model that will allow the whole system to work more cohesively.
“The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners has told me how this limits the range of digital solutions that can be used to improve diagnostic and specialist consultations for rural patients,” he said.
“We are working on that. The second phase of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise’s Rural Broadband Initiative involves rolling out enhanced broadband connectivity infrastructure progressively into rural NZ.”
