File photo. Photo: 123rf
The nationwide shortage of GPs is hitting hard in New Plymouth, with not a single practice in the city taking on new patients.
The College of General Practitioners said the situation was critical in many parts of the country including Taranaki, Hawke's Bay, Northland, Southland, the West Coast and parts of Auckland and Wellington
New Plymouth businesswoman Charlotte Ward knew enrolling at a GP could be difficult, so when a close family member returned from overseas she contacted the clinic she already goes to.
Charlotte Ward said the closest GP service she could enrol her relative in was more than an hour away. Photo: Supplied
"It was a just a straight 'really sorry Charlotte but no there's no room in the inn here', and they suggested a couple of other places, so I rang them and they were all 'no'.
"And the closest I could find online was Ōpunake and Hāwera and I believe there might have been one place in Pātea and that's it."
Those towns are all about an hour's drive away or further.
Ward said the situation was a big worry.
"So it is quite a horrifying thought that in a progressive - I believe - province like we are here in Taranaki you cannot get into a doctor, there's not even a waiting list."
An Auckland woman, who had recently retired to New Plymouth with her husband, had a similar experience.
RNZ agreed not to identify her.
"I rang around and everybody just said they're not taking any patients.
"So then I went to three big clinics within two kilometres each other in Strandon Fitzroy and they all had at least five doctors listed and before I even asked it was 'no we don't take any patients'."
She said although the couple were getting virtual support from an Auckland GP, if either of them get ill they would end up at the local Emergency Department.
The GP network Pinnacle Health said many practices across Taranaki were at capacity and the situation was particularly tight in New Plymouth.
It was not aware of any of the city's 17 clinics accepting new enrolments.
A spokesperson said there were no easy answers to the situation the province found itself in.
"The hard truth is we're at the pointy edge of a trend that we, alongside primary care bodies such as General Practice NZ and the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners have been lobbying about for some years."
Dr Bryan Betty. Photo: RNZ / Karen Brown
College of General Practitioners medical director Dr Bryan Betty said the problem was getting worse.
"It's a real real issue and there's certain areas that are getting really affected and certainly Taranaki is one of them, but we're seeing this in Northland, in parts of Hawke's Bay, down south in Invercargill and Porirua in Wellington.
"So, it's due to the national shortage of GPs and it's been building for a couple of decades, but it's really starting to hit home now."
The numbers are stark.
"We run about 72 GPs per 100,000 population, and if we look across the Tasman at Australia they run 119 GPs per 100,000, so really on our baseline we're lower in terms of the number of GPs we have in the country compared to comparable countries overseas."
The national GP to patient ratio is 1 to 1400, in Taranaki it sits at one to 1850.
Dr Betty said the shortage was leading to poor health outcomes for patients and having a huge impact on hospital emergency departments.
