Media release from Waikato District Health Board

Waikato District Health Board chief executive Craig Climo says he wants to see more action out in the rural communities towards a more joined up health workforce.

Speaking at last week's Taumarunui Community Health Forum (Wednesday 21 July), Mr Climo said the changing nature of rural health delivery, caused in part by an ageing population, meant primary and secondary health care services needed to work more closely together.

That would mean health professionals in rest homes, St John, non-government organisations, GPs, pharmacists and hospitals would need to work in a different way and said he recognised that was an uncomfortable prospect for many.

Mr Climo said rural health was one of Waikato DHB's six organisational priorities because 60 per cent of the DHB's population lived outside of Hamilton, making it the most rural DHB in New Zealand.

He told forum members that he was not running a centralisation agenda and as the largest hospital in Australasia, Waikato Hospital didn't need to expand any further.

"What I don't want is to be responding to a crisis, when our ageing population ages even further and our already fragile rural workforce becomes more fragile.

"We need to work together across the range of health care services so that GPs working in primary care, can also work in hospitals and vice versa. We want paramedics to be able to come and help in emergency departments if they need to.

"We want district nurses to be able to do the work of practice nurses or public health nurses, and vice versa. We need to be able to share resources so that there is a strong, capable and sustainable workforce to care for our people in our communities today and in the years to come."

"But I am not asking the current generation of health professionals to make the change; I'm simply asking them to agree that this is the way things will need to work in the future. That would be a good start.

"There is no need for unrest; the facts are the facts and at the moment they are telling us that by 2021, we will need 23,000 more health professionals than we have already got.

"I don't think that's doable either financially, or in our ability to recruit and retain that level of staffing in health."

Mr Climo said Waikato DHB and rural communities had been talking about ways to start making workforce improvements in rural health for more than two years and he was keen to  see some action with the help of the community.

A general rural health message from Mr Climo is on the Waikato DHB website at www.waikatodhb.govt.nz/gettinginvolved