Photo: 123rf
Te Whatu Ora is setting out to woo more overseas-trained specialists to move to New Zealand by targeting international medical conferences, using local clinicians to do the sweet-talking.
Chief people officer Andrew Slater said from early next year, international recruiters would partner with New Zealand consultants, who regularly travelled overseas for further training.
"We're about to pilot some initiatives where we get our recruitment people to work alongside our senior medical officers while they're overseas to get people as fast as possible into New Zealand and into the New Zealand system."
The idea came from feedback from consultants themselves, who said access to recruitment services would be helpful in speeding up the process where someone was interested in coming to New Zealand, he said.
The agency planned to have "physical immigration hubs in key jurisdictions" up and running early next year.
Despite the global competition, international medical graduates and specialists were attracted to New Zealand for further training and to work in some of our facilities, Slater said.
"We've been successful in adding about 200, or more than 200, senior doctors to the workforce in the last 12 months."
However, shortages in some specialities remained a challenge, with an estimated shortfall of 1700 doctors across the system.
Te Whatu Ora was also aiming to support more New Zealand medical graduates to train as specialists, through the National Resident Doctors Support Service, which it aimed to have in place by July next year.
That would finally show how many doctors were in training in each speciality and when they would become consultants.
Doctors and their unions have blamed the current workforce gaps on years of an ad hoc approach, and a reluctance by some district health boards to pay to train specialists for other regions.
According to the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, there were 28 specialties with more consultants over 55 years of age than trainees on track to replace them.
"One of our challenges is we've had an inconsistent approach in how the training budgets have been distributed within the organisation," Slater said.
"In coming together as Te Whatu Ora, what we want to do is make sure that we get that budget to the place that is undertaking that training."
The policy was already in place for a national approach to training, and Te Whatu Ora was working over the next couple of months to ensure the processes were there to support it at a local level, he said.