The Alliance Party has announced its health policy, which
includes the elimination of costs for GP visits, dental,
optical, and audiology services.
In order to achieve
this, the policy creates the Community Health Service (CHS)
as the main funding and logistical service to bring primary
and allied health services into the public
service.
Existing services have the option to join the
CHS, with the CHS covering the costs of the practice,
including rent, payroll, administration, and information
technology. The staff would be employed by the
CHS.
For the patients, there would be very few changes
in the short term. The CHS would take over the practice, but
the patients would still see the same doctors, and it would
still be the same clinic. The biggest change would be that
appointments would be free.
The CHS would also change
how the system is funded. Primary care funding moves beyond
capitation, with money allocated for things like chronic
care clinics. Community and hospital services would then be
funded as one system, so that keeping someone out of
hospital counts as a win rather than a hospital losing the
funding for treating them.
Alliance health
spokesperson and candidate for Christchurch East, Ethan
Gullery, says this is a positive step towards a fully
integrated health care system.
“Right now, we treat
the system as a bunch of disconnected pieces, funding
hospitals one way and funding clinics another. We know that
the best care is earliest care, but the focus is on the
secondary care system. The Alliance wants to change
that.”
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In the Alliance’s CHS model, community and
primary care workers would be equal to their secondary care
colleagues in pay and would come under the existing
collective agreements.
Māori health providers would
keep the option to remain independent, with full funding and
pay equity for their staff either way.
“A fragmented
system means a fragmented workforce, negotiating with many
employers, trying to get the bare minimum.”
Mr
Gullery says this change is the shakeup needed.
“We
have heard from GPs and GP practices, and it has become
obvious in those conversations that very few people become
doctors in order to end up being small businesspeople. Not
only that but they are running small businesses in an area
where the economics stopped being favourable decades
ago.”
“The Alliance is the only party willing to
stand up and say the entire system needs to
change.”
