Otago Daily Times: Medical staff are so fed up with system they are quitting — health CEO

The Save Our Public Healthcare Roady rolled into Gore yesterday, and the message from the local health sector was pretty stark.

Gore Health chief executive Karl Metzler told the meeting he is seeing health professionals leave primary care because they’re fed up with a system that stops them getting their patients the care they need.

Referrals for specialist care are being bounced back. Patients aren’t getting the treatment their clinicians believe they need. And the people working inside the system are becoming so disheartened, some are walking away.

David Galler told the meeting we need to stop treating healthcare simply as a cost to be managed and start treating it as an investment in people, communities and the future of Aotearoa.

And his warning was blunt: if we continue shifting public money into private healthcare, we risk losing the public health service altogether.

We’ve got a long way north to go yet.

The article is paywalled, but if you have an ODT subscription, you can read the full story here.