{"id":533953,"date":"2026-07-19T17:52:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T17:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/533953\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T17:52:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T17:52:41","slug":"mass-disenrollment-from-hastings-gp-patient-says-many-will-rely-on-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/533953\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass disenrollment from Hastings GP: Patient says many will rely on ED"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meanwhile, an organisation that represents and trains GPs in New Zealand says while there is a shortage of GPs nationally, it is rare for a medical clinic to disenrol patients, and it will put pressure on other practices.<\/p>\n

Hastings has 10 general practices<\/a> (including Hauora Heretaunga), according to the Health Hawke\u2019s Bay website.<\/p>\n

One affected patient, who did not want to be named, said she received an email this month informing her that she was being disenrolled.<\/p>\n

She said she had been at the same practice for many years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been really good, no issues getting an appointment within seven days, sometimes same day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t found a new GP, and I assume it\u2019ll be extremely difficult with potentially 3000 people needing to find one at this time of year.\u201d<\/p>\n

She expected many people would rely on the Hawke\u2019s Bay Hospital emergency department (ED), in Hastings, if they could not enrol at a new GP \u2013 herself included.<\/p>\n

\u201cI absolutely believe ED will get much worse<\/a>,” she said, given that influx.<\/p>\n

She said she would like to enrol at Totara Health in future, if possible, as it has affordable clinics (in Hastings and Flaxmere).<\/p>\n

Totara Health has been contacted for comment about how many new patients it can potentially take on.<\/p>\n

TToH has a project team working on the transition of 3000 patients to other GPs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ask for wh\u0101nau patience as we work through this, which is expected to take approximately two to three weeks,\u201d a TToH spokeswoman said on Friday.<\/p>\n

TToH chairman Mike Paku said earlier this month that the decision \u201chas been made to protect the health and safety of our wh\u0101nau, first and foremost\u201d.<\/p>\n

He called for urgent government support to sustain kaupapa M\u0101ori GP clinics.<\/p>\n

Health NZ Central\u2019s regional director planning, Geoff Gwyn, said kaupapa M\u0101ori primary care providers played a vital role in improving health outcomes for M\u0101ori communities.<\/p>\n

He said service continuity planning was happening with the wider general practice network.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis may include the viable transfer of enrolled patients to other practices with the capacity to care for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Royal NZ College of General Practitioners president Dr Luke Bradford said New Zealand had a lot of clinics not taking on new enrolments, because they could not recruit more staff.<\/p>\n

He said that although there was a shortage of GPs, it was rare to disenrol patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not very common for practices to make the decision to disenrol patients, I\u2019ve not heard of it before, but certainly there are clinics where they are struggling for staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said a sudden increase of 3000 patients in a regional city would \u201cput pressure on other practices\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, an organisation that represents and trains GPs in New Zealand says while there is a shortage of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[169841,20133,682,2068,1550,26034,263432,263431,13973,15974,46227,1866,71,2294,69835,5194,2241,3242,5829,27612,3523,111,43,139,69,90,1597,6293,52871,13491,160404,312,1533],"class_list":["post-533953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-169841","tag-attention","tag-being","tag-cant","tag-centre","tag-department","tag-disenrolled","tag-disenrollment","tag-ed","tag-emergency","tag-essential","tag-find","tag-from","tag-general","tag-gp","tag-hastings","tag-hospital","tag-large","tag-many","tag-mass","tag-medical","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-patient","tag-patients","tag-practice","tag-probably","tag-rely","tag-says","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533953","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=533953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}