the increase in demand<\/a> for the diagnosis and treatment of conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and stroke.<\/p>\nOne Southland woman, who didn’t want to be identified, was told it would be four months before she could see a neurologist in New Zealand, after she began having seizures on holiday in France.<\/p>\n
Over there, even as a tourist, she said she was able to see a neurologist that same day, after her husband noticed something was amiss.<\/p>\n
“I had a funny incident that he noted, and he wondered if I’d had a stroke or something, so he ended up taking me to the hospital there,” she said.<\/p>\n
“They did MRIs and CTs and things, and they thought it was a TIA – a Transient Ischemic Attack, so they put me on medication for that.”<\/p>\n
A TIA was also known as a mini-stroke.<\/p>\n
But back home, the episodes continued – she said she would zone out for a few minutes, and then be left very confused for the next half hour.<\/p>\n
She made an appointment with her GP, who referred her to a neurologist privately through health inurance, but the earliest appointment was January 2026 – four months away.<\/p>\n
“I was really surprised, because I’d seen a neurologist in France much quicker. We did have to pay, but I don’t think it was too much – I think it was like a thousand dollars or something. It wasn’t astronomical.”<\/p>\n
Her seizures were getting worse – up from one a week, to one every two days – and her GP redirected her through the public system.<\/p>\n
She finally saw a local neurologist in November, who diagnosed her with epilepsy.<\/p>\n
“They got me on medication, and I haven’t had a seizure since,” she said.<\/p>\n
The University of Otago study found New Zealand ranked well below other high-income countries when it came to numbers, with 83 neurologists, public and private, as of the report’s time of writing in 2024.<\/p>\n
That was one per 74,000 people – just over half that of Australia – and far below the recommended best practice level found by one Australian workforce model of one per 28,000 people.<\/p>\n
David Ross, who lives in Huntly, said he was surprised by those numbers, he was referred to a neurologist in late January, and the first thing he received was a letter apologising for the wait time, which was seven weeks.<\/p>\n
“And the idea, of course, of going private is that you might go through a bit quicker, but it looks like it’s not going to be.”<\/p>\n
Nearly $600 to see someone privately, and a seven week wait – David nearly picked up the phone and said, “forget it”.<\/p>\n
But he didn’t want to lose his place on the waitlist – and luckily, he wasn’t waiting in pain.<\/p>\n
“It’s okay, I just need to get an opinion on what they recommend for my condition. It looks like Parkinson’s because I shake a bit sometimes, but other times, I’m fine.”<\/p>\n
But it wasn’t getting any better, and he and his family would like some answers.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t give you a lot of confidence in the overall system.”<\/p>\n
Neurologist Dr David Gow, a regional chief medical officer at Te Whatu Ora, said the national health agency was committed to giving New Zealanders timely access to healthcare and strengthening the workforce.<\/p>\n
“We know that, as part of this, we need to grow our healthcare workforce, and this is not exclusive to neurology.”<\/p>\n
Health targets like shorter wait times applied to neurology, as for all specialities.<\/p>\n
“We value research papers like this one as they can be considered alongside our own workforce planning,” he said.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It can take months to see a specialist in New Zealand. (File photo) Photo: PEAKSTOCK \/ SCIENCE PHOTO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-292302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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