Extended after-hours services in Invercargill will help more patients access a GP on the day they need it, while increasing weekend capacity.
Invercargill National MP Penny Simmonds announced the news this week, saying the initiative was part of a $164 million Budget 2025 investment aimed at strengthening urgent and after-hours care.
The after-hours services in Invercargill have gone from being open from 6pm to 9pm during the week, and from noon to 4pm on weekends and public holidays to operating from 11.30am to 8pm on weekdays and from 9am to 5pm on weekends.
“The changes mean the urgent doctor service in Invercargill will be open for almost 60 hours a week, compared with the current 23 hours,” Simmonds said. “That’s an extra 35.5 hours of care that local people will now be able to access.”
This comes as the New Zealand Nurses Organisation is calling for an overhaul of the system to fix what it calls a crisis in primary health care.
President Anne Daniels welcomed a Labour Party commitment to take the pressure off overcrowded emergency departments (EDs) by hiring more nurses, making it easier to see a GP and getting patients into hospital beds faster, but said with one in three GP practices now under corporate overseas ownership, it was time to consider the need for public ownership of primary care.
“This will reduce the time pressures on GPs and nurse practitioners created by running a business while caring for patients,” Daniels said.
Latest Health New Zealand data shows that around 256,224 people in Southland and Otago are enrolled with a general practice – which means that, based on latest Stats NZ population estimates, there are still around 100,000 people in the district who are not enrolled with a GP.
Many of these will benefit from being able to access after-hours care rather than going to the ED.
The Invercargill after-hours service is run by Primary Health Organisation WellSouth’s Te Hau o Te Ora on Don St, in partnership with Hokonui Rūnanga and Te Rūnaka o Awarua.
WellSouth chief executive Andrew Swanson-Dobbs said the change that mattered most was improving access to care for people who had struggled to be seen quickly.
“That’s a parent whose child gets sick during the school day, an older person whose health declines in the afternoon, or someone whose own practice can’t see them,” he said. “Until now, many of those people have had to wait until the evening or go to the hospital emergency department.”
Swanson-Dobbs expected the extended hours to take pressure off the emergency department.
“It helps general practice as well, because practices that are already at capacity now have somewhere reliable to send patients they can’t fit in.”
He believed credit for the initiative should go to the team at Te Hau o Te Ora for staffing and running the extended service.
“Those extra hours need doctors and nurses to work them, and we’ll be working with Te Hau o Te Ora and Health NZ to make sure the service can be staffed for the long term.”
Swanson-Dobbs said the delay in rolling out the initiative was because of internal processing delays at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora – Southern.
