GPs say they've been passed over in the Budget and want to be at the table when the extra health support the government has promised is divvied up.
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General practice did not get a mention in yesterday's Budget announcement, but Minister of Finance Grant Robertson says there will be more help for the health sector in coming months.
There were no details about what that might be.
General Practice NZ chairperson Jeff Lowe said the Budget was disappointing.
"The fight against Covid-19 has been out in the community, and general practice has been front and centre. So, it's important that we have stable workforces and businesses that are going to deal with Covid-19 as we go through this winter and the deferred work from both hospitals and in the community that is ahead of us," he said.
The government has already given $500 million to the health sector to help with Covid-19, with $37m directly to general practice.
It is also possible some of the roughly $4 billion given to DHBs in a pre-budget announcement this week will filter down to general practice.
College of GPs president Samantha Murton said the problem was that they just did not know.
GPs need to be invested in as much as the hospitals were, Murton said.
"We've been talking about Wellbeing Budgets and wellbeing is a general practitioner's gig - that's what we're doing all the time. If we really are truly going to invest in wellbeing then that funding needs to be out in the community," she said.
General practitioners needed to be part of the discussions when the government decided how to spend the rest of the promised money, she said.
Besides the work they do every day, they needed money to help with telehealth and serving their rural patients.
The College of Midwives was also disappointed not to have been singled out in the Budget.
Its chief executive, Alison Eddy, said they were perplexed about having to wait to see what might come in the future support Robertson signalled.
Eddy said it was especially disappointing given the priority the government was supposed to be placing on the first 1000 days of a child's life.
"The workforce that's really key to the outcomes of those mothers and babies just hasn't had the priority placed on it," she said.
Read more about the 2020 Budget: