He told Checkpoint he was \u201csick\u201d at the decision, but also \u201crelieved\u201d that the matter had come to the nation\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs nurses, we try. We will run ourselves ragged until to get the job done. But it\u2019s certainly not safe for the patients. It\u2019s not safe for the staff psychologically.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the clinic was a \u201cpressure cooker\u201d as there were limited clinicians.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a nurse practitioner [who] works for us four days a week. We\u2019ve got a nurse prescriber [who] is fulltime, but she\u2019s leaving in two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said a lot of experience had left Pah\u012batua Medical centre today: a phlebotomist of 15 years, an administrator of 21 years, three registered nurses including himself, and a nurse practitioner.<\/p>\n
He said the clinic would \u201ccertainly not\u201d function without them.<\/p>\n
He said an acute clinic had been set up a few months ago, but patients were being seen there when it was not appropriate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re getting ACC, we\u2019re getting working income renewals and all of that sort of thing just can\u2019t be done in an acute setting.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stressed that the staff were not leaving the community behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have put out there that we are willing to work with other providers who recognise the importance of our community, recognise the importance of our staff and are willing to work with us towards providing essential primary healthcare in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tony Wai \u2013 chief executive of the Primary Health Organisation, which managed the clinic\u2019s contract \u2013 responded that he felt concerns could be addressed with a plan, but he was not sure what that plan would look like.<\/p>\n
However, health advocacy group Patient Voice Aotearoa called for a review into every patient who had a screening test through Tararua Health Group.<\/p>\n
Co-founder and spokesperson Malcolm Mulholland said the group serviced 9500 patients in the wider area.<\/p>\n
He told Checkpoint that a review was important to understand patients\u2019 status as a delayed cancer diagnosis resulted in negative health outcomes.<\/p>\n
He said the Health Minister and Health New Zealand were responsible.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, it\u2019s up to the Minister and Health New Zealand to intervene and say, \u2018enough is enough; we\u2019re pulling the contract and we\u2019re going back to the community to see what best meets their needs\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mulholland said other regions were facing similar problems, citing Kirikiri as an example of where there might not be a GP within a couple of years.<\/p>\n
In order to retain GPs in rural areas, he argued that Health NZ should hire practitioners directly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no middleman, there\u2019s no PHO, there\u2019s no business, there\u2019s no practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the approach would hand doctors more freedom as well.<\/p>\n
Patient Voice Aotearoa and Kaitiaki Hauora have organised public meetings in Pah\u012batua, Woodville and Dannevirke from Tuesday, September 22 to discuss Tararua Health Group.<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He told Checkpoint he was \u201csick\u201d at the decision, but also \u201crelieved\u201d that the matter had come to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[179899,1550,43863,179900,2082,71,134,527,302,3523,111,139,5006,69,65671,6293,3056,19098,4739,1516,223],"class_list":["post-612120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-anya","tag-centre","tag-certainly","tag-fielding","tag-for","tag-from","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-its","tag-medical","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-pahatua","tag-patients","tag-resign","tag-safe","tag-six","tag-staff","tag-the"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612120","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=612120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}