Tena koutou katoa, I’m writing to you all in acknowledgement of the letter from GPNZ to the Prime Minister, and in acknowledgement of the very significant pressure impacting on you all as a result of increasing population and need across the Bay of Plenty. At this time of unprecedented demand, I first want to express our sincere thanks and appreciation to all of you for the incredible support you’ve all provided into our BOP COVID efforts over the last year and your ongoing and hugely appreciated efforts to provide the best general practice based care we can to our communities. We would all acknowledge that we are now working in a system that was designed for a very different context and is now operating at the maximum extent of its capacity in the Bay. I also acknowledge that it is often difficult to achieve referral access for your patients to a number of specialties in secondary care and that this will be extremely frustrating. This frustration flows through the system and, on top of significant workloads, is one of the things that wears people down and can be a component of burnout. In addition, we are all working in an overly bureaucratic system model with suboptimal future state planning. We are all expecting that system change arising from the Health and Disability Review – notably as referred to in the GPNZ letter – will help us by unlocking current system constraints and thereby pave the way for a system model designed for today’s needs. That said, I am increasingly thinking that there are elements of our current state that may not be quickly resolved by national changes and that there is a growing imperative to act in any of the things we are able to control locally, especially where these align and pave the way for national changes. Later in April I will be meeting with the CEOs of the three Bay of Plenty PHOs to discuss, in the light of the first information from the Minister having by then been released, whether there are specific courses of action that we need to take in the Bay in the light of our local pressures. None of us, unfortunately, can wave a magic wand but if there are things we can advance as a whole BOP health Community that will serve us well in the short- medium term and mesh well with the national direction of travel then I think it’s an imperative on us all to do so. For now, thank you all for your tireless efforts in providing high standards of general practice care across the Bay which are both highly valued and sincerely appreciated. Nga mihi Pete Pete Chandler | Chief Executive Officer Bay of Plenty District Health Board Private Bag 12024, Tauranga Mail Centre, Tauranga 3143 New Zealand +64 (07) 579 8363 M: 027 807 1937
Pete.chandler@bopdhb.govt.nz