High Street Health Hub is mainly relying on telehealth to provide care due to its lack of staff. Photo: Supplied/Google Maps
The Primary Health Organisation says a struggling Lower Hutt doctors' clinic cannot entirely blame the national workforce shortage for its own near total lack of staff.
High Street Health Hub experienced a mass exodus of staff following a change of ownership last year, leaving only one doctor based at another practice to service 9000 patients.
The clinic, owned by Green Cross Health, has had to stop doing face-to-face consultations except in urgent cases, instead relying on telehealth to provide care.
A number of frustrated patients have told RNZ they had been unable to enrol elsewhere as other local practices were full.
The practice told RNZ it was having trouble hiring doctors and nurses because of the national workforce shortages.
But Cherie Seamark, chief executive of local primary health organisation Te Awakairangi Health Network which controls the clinic's funding, said other GPs in their patch were not experiencing this to the same extent.
"This is not to underplay the very real shortage of GPs, however saying this is solely a national workforce issue underplays what we have seen unfold at this practice over the past six months," she said.
The funding organisation had been working with Green Cross on its issues for most of the year, Seamark said, after having first met with them in December 2023, and she was "awaiting a detailed plan from Green Cross Health today about how they intend to better address patients' needs".
It said it had offered a range of support measures to the clinic but "not all offers of support that we have made have been taken up".
Green Cross said in a statement it was "not clear" on what they had been offered, but turned down.
When RNZ requested a copy of the plan for addressing its issues, Green Cross said it was "commercial in confidence".
A former GP at the practice, who did not want to be named, said it had felt like management had been in no rush to replace staff.
There had been about seven full-time doctors at the clinic, until four left for reasons unrelated to the job, and were not replaced.
"We were expected to take on the workload of the doctors who left and shoulder that responsibility on top of our own," they said.
Concerned with their ability to provide good care to patients under those conditions, most of the remaining doctors and nurses left the clinic.
"The nurses all resigned en masse, and we had no practice nurses. That was another factor that then influenced our decision, or certainly my decision, to resign. It really isn't safe to practice."