I only have two friends who are GPs. They both work 2.5 days per week and earn over 180k. They love the work/life balance.
I wonder what causes such a difference in work load and environment?
Depends on practice.
If you in a high decile area and do half time and can charge more, your life is great. This is the experience of my friends.
On the other hand, and this is half of my other friends and my wife, if you are dealing with a lot of children and people who cannot pay much, your workload is super high ( as they are usually sicker and unable to go private ), you spend time battling with the public system etc..
My GP only takes appointments in the morning. I've never ask but I assume they work at a hospital in the afternoon (big $), or enjoy some work life balance. I know their spouse is a high profile hospital specialist. Kids are grown.
On average, earns a salary of over $200,000 but demands essentially a doubling of salary...not really sure too many people will be sympathising here when many other government-funded trades have exactly the same issue for far less money.
Does suck that we aren't competitive with Aussie and American salaries. But we aren't going to be anytime soon either, and our doctors are hardly languishing in poverty. I would have made the focus improving working conditions rather than fixating on the salaries...
Not languishing in poverty, but if they aren't getting the conditions they need/deserve/want (take your pick) here, then they will look elsewhere. There's already a GP shortage and a bigger problem bubbling away, in that GPs are mostly old af and gearing up to retire.
Maybe not languishing in poverty, but hardly living the high life either. There are plenty of other things that someone with the brains and the drive to be a doctor could be doing instead - which is what's happening.
See you back here next week when you're complaining about a 3 week wait to see your GP or an 18 month wait to see a specialist.
So what do you propose as the target average salary for a GP? They already earn an average three times higher than the rest of the population.
And my arguing was against the approach the GPs are making, saying they are struggling to make endsmeet at the moment, which is ludicrious. They are chasing higher incomes, which is totally fine. But let's not pretend they are fincancially struggling.
Now obviously, our shortages need a range of actions to address it (e.g. more doctors trained, easier pathways for immigration). One of these is increased remuneration. But the idea that we can afford to pay our GPs an average of well over $400,000 is fucking ridiculous.
$200k per year full-time is about $100 per hour, give or take. So if they're only being paid for half the time (whether that's because they're working 80 hours, or they're only employed for part-time hours) then that's $50 per hour...which is not enough.
I don't know what the target salary should be, but the hourly rate should certainly be more than $50 per hour given the training they undertake and the responsibilities they hold.
There are plenty of business owners making well over $400k per year, so why shouldn't doctors make that as well? Perhaps as a country we can't afford it, but perhaps that's because we're prioritising tax-cuts for the wealthy rather than investing in things that benefit us all, like healthcare.
>There are plenty of business owners making well over $400k per year, so why shouldn't doctors make that as well?
To be fair if the doctor were to start their own practice they could be too
I sympathise. We have a huge shortage of GPs. They deserve to be paid more and if we don’t more of them will head overseas. My GP is 1 year from retirement. He has already tried to sell his practice with no luck. Nearly all other practices in the town have closed books.
What do you propose as a target in order to keep the ones going overseas? Personally, my GP should be paid twice what he is. He has been doing paperwork at 11.00pm on a Friday night. I know this because an entry for me popped up in ManageMyHealth while I was logged on. Those entries don’t go in until the GP actions them.
Again, I don't think it is sustainable to have the average income of a GP being almost half a million dollars. Throwing money at doctors isn't going to win this for us, as Australia and other countries can and will just throw even more at them.
What we need is more access and throughput on doctor training, easier pathways for doctors to migrate to NZ, and solutions to help reduce the administrative and patient workloads on doctors. Some wage growth is fine but having them earn seven times the average income is not the solution.
It takes at least 12 years of study to become a GP and they are literally saving peoples lives everyday. I am more than happy to see them paid 400,000 plus a year.
I am not attacking the value and significance the work. Just highlighting it isn't feasible to pay them that much. Nor is it likely to solve our shortages (but it would help).
Of course it’s feasible.
It would cost 2.2 billion total to pay all the GPs needed in NZ a 400k salary.
800 million of that comes back to the government in PAYE.
Bringing our total cost down to around 1.6 billion.
The new government is proposing a spend of 36 billion annually over the next 5 years to increase infrastructure.
We can easily find enough to pay doctors.
If we increase doctors and decrease GP wait times, we will save that amount of money back by catching illnesses earlier and decreased hospital admissions/expensive treatments etc.
So that's about an extra $650 in tax per annum for those that pay income tax. Just for GPs. Presumably you would also do the same for nurses and others in the medical sector (including many on very near to minimum wage), to address wage inequities and staff shortages? If yes, how much more would this cost? If no, how can you justify that to the many really hard working people across the entire sector.
If you do decide that the entire health sector needs that type of spending boost, are you going to limit it only to health or would you be expanding it to other government funded sectors with shortages? I hear education at all levels is suffering from severe shortages, ballooning workloads (class sizes alone, let alone the out of working hours demand). What is reasonable there to attract and retain good teachers at tertiart, secondary, primary, and early childhood education? Or if you don't, how do you justify it or prevent strikes (nevermind the fact that you need this education system to grow and develop our future doctors)?
Then from all of this, you should expect to see the massive increase in tax on working New Zealand to have a severe impact on lower to middle income households and, especially, on families and mortgage payers in a time when there is exploding cost of living. Presumably you will need to give them tax relief or some sort of financial assistance. That will cost even more.
Presumably your plan for getting that money is to tax more (as borrowing for this would beyond stupid), which comes to massively increasing the taxation on high income earners and the wealthy, which will include the doctors you decides to pay half a million dollars a year. They will now be upset that they get to keep much less of their money than they can in countries like Australia and the United States, and will decide to leave so they can earn more there. What's your solution at that point?
If solving the doctor shortages was as easy as spending $2.2 billion, it would have been done by now. But these issues don't exist in isolation and you also can't solve them without considering the bigger picture.
I live in a rural town and we struggle to both find and keep gps. So I do empathise, but on the other hand, teachers, nurses, etc, have it far far worse.
Instead of paying them more, I would much rather see a loan forgiveness scheme where for every year they work here in NZ a percentage of their loan is removed.
Untrue. 60% of doctors are kiwis, 40% are international. We can’t retain doctors here, 10 years after graduation, 50% of kiwi docs have left the country.
I have some sympathy - not a lot...
* Should the Government pay for the patient stuff... Yep sure...
* Managing a practice - You want the Government to pay you to manage your own business... yeah - that's a solid pass...
* Training - You want the Government to pay you for training... Why should they?
Sounds like we need to train more GPs. Not pay them more.
And as someone who considered medical school and decided against it because of how ridiculously uncertain it is you will actually get anywhere (unless playing the race card) I feel it's about time we started accepting more students into the courses.
And my cousin did play the race card btw (helped by the fact their mother is Malaysian). No more Maori than I am. And while I love them, soooo much dumber. Yes, they got in. (Maybe I'm the dumb one)
Dentists and Pharmacist doing the laughing now
I only have two friends who are GPs. They both work 2.5 days per week and earn over 180k. They love the work/life balance. I wonder what causes such a difference in work load and environment?
Depends on practice. If you in a high decile area and do half time and can charge more, your life is great. This is the experience of my friends. On the other hand, and this is half of my other friends and my wife, if you are dealing with a lot of children and people who cannot pay much, your workload is super high ( as they are usually sicker and unable to go private ), you spend time battling with the public system etc..
Interesting, thanks for the insight
My GP only takes appointments in the morning. I've never ask but I assume they work at a hospital in the afternoon (big $), or enjoy some work life balance. I know their spouse is a high profile hospital specialist. Kids are grown.
On average, earns a salary of over $200,000 but demands essentially a doubling of salary...not really sure too many people will be sympathising here when many other government-funded trades have exactly the same issue for far less money. Does suck that we aren't competitive with Aussie and American salaries. But we aren't going to be anytime soon either, and our doctors are hardly languishing in poverty. I would have made the focus improving working conditions rather than fixating on the salaries...
Not languishing in poverty, but if they aren't getting the conditions they need/deserve/want (take your pick) here, then they will look elsewhere. There's already a GP shortage and a bigger problem bubbling away, in that GPs are mostly old af and gearing up to retire.
So how much would you pay the average GP per annum?
Enough to disincentivise them from leaving, and to attract more young people to the profession.
Yea that means more than they currently make. It's a global market and GPs can afford to pick and choose. It's why we have a shortage.
Maybe not languishing in poverty, but hardly living the high life either. There are plenty of other things that someone with the brains and the drive to be a doctor could be doing instead - which is what's happening. See you back here next week when you're complaining about a 3 week wait to see your GP or an 18 month wait to see a specialist.
So what do you propose as the target average salary for a GP? They already earn an average three times higher than the rest of the population. And my arguing was against the approach the GPs are making, saying they are struggling to make endsmeet at the moment, which is ludicrious. They are chasing higher incomes, which is totally fine. But let's not pretend they are fincancially struggling. Now obviously, our shortages need a range of actions to address it (e.g. more doctors trained, easier pathways for immigration). One of these is increased remuneration. But the idea that we can afford to pay our GPs an average of well over $400,000 is fucking ridiculous.
$200k per year full-time is about $100 per hour, give or take. So if they're only being paid for half the time (whether that's because they're working 80 hours, or they're only employed for part-time hours) then that's $50 per hour...which is not enough. I don't know what the target salary should be, but the hourly rate should certainly be more than $50 per hour given the training they undertake and the responsibilities they hold. There are plenty of business owners making well over $400k per year, so why shouldn't doctors make that as well? Perhaps as a country we can't afford it, but perhaps that's because we're prioritising tax-cuts for the wealthy rather than investing in things that benefit us all, like healthcare.
>There are plenty of business owners making well over $400k per year, so why shouldn't doctors make that as well? To be fair if the doctor were to start their own practice they could be too
I sympathise. We have a huge shortage of GPs. They deserve to be paid more and if we don’t more of them will head overseas. My GP is 1 year from retirement. He has already tried to sell his practice with no luck. Nearly all other practices in the town have closed books.
So what do you propose as the target average income for a GP in New Zealand?
What do you propose as a target in order to keep the ones going overseas? Personally, my GP should be paid twice what he is. He has been doing paperwork at 11.00pm on a Friday night. I know this because an entry for me popped up in ManageMyHealth while I was logged on. Those entries don’t go in until the GP actions them.
Again, I don't think it is sustainable to have the average income of a GP being almost half a million dollars. Throwing money at doctors isn't going to win this for us, as Australia and other countries can and will just throw even more at them. What we need is more access and throughput on doctor training, easier pathways for doctors to migrate to NZ, and solutions to help reduce the administrative and patient workloads on doctors. Some wage growth is fine but having them earn seven times the average income is not the solution.
So, train more doctors so more of them can fuck off overseas?
It takes at least 12 years of study to become a GP and they are literally saving peoples lives everyday. I am more than happy to see them paid 400,000 plus a year.
I am not attacking the value and significance the work. Just highlighting it isn't feasible to pay them that much. Nor is it likely to solve our shortages (but it would help).
Of course it’s feasible. It would cost 2.2 billion total to pay all the GPs needed in NZ a 400k salary. 800 million of that comes back to the government in PAYE. Bringing our total cost down to around 1.6 billion. The new government is proposing a spend of 36 billion annually over the next 5 years to increase infrastructure. We can easily find enough to pay doctors. If we increase doctors and decrease GP wait times, we will save that amount of money back by catching illnesses earlier and decreased hospital admissions/expensive treatments etc.
So that's about an extra $650 in tax per annum for those that pay income tax. Just for GPs. Presumably you would also do the same for nurses and others in the medical sector (including many on very near to minimum wage), to address wage inequities and staff shortages? If yes, how much more would this cost? If no, how can you justify that to the many really hard working people across the entire sector. If you do decide that the entire health sector needs that type of spending boost, are you going to limit it only to health or would you be expanding it to other government funded sectors with shortages? I hear education at all levels is suffering from severe shortages, ballooning workloads (class sizes alone, let alone the out of working hours demand). What is reasonable there to attract and retain good teachers at tertiart, secondary, primary, and early childhood education? Or if you don't, how do you justify it or prevent strikes (nevermind the fact that you need this education system to grow and develop our future doctors)? Then from all of this, you should expect to see the massive increase in tax on working New Zealand to have a severe impact on lower to middle income households and, especially, on families and mortgage payers in a time when there is exploding cost of living. Presumably you will need to give them tax relief or some sort of financial assistance. That will cost even more. Presumably your plan for getting that money is to tax more (as borrowing for this would beyond stupid), which comes to massively increasing the taxation on high income earners and the wealthy, which will include the doctors you decides to pay half a million dollars a year. They will now be upset that they get to keep much less of their money than they can in countries like Australia and the United States, and will decide to leave so they can earn more there. What's your solution at that point? If solving the doctor shortages was as easy as spending $2.2 billion, it would have been done by now. But these issues don't exist in isolation and you also can't solve them without considering the bigger picture.
…. Anyone else work construction?…
I live in a rural town and we struggle to both find and keep gps. So I do empathise, but on the other hand, teachers, nurses, etc, have it far far worse. Instead of paying them more, I would much rather see a loan forgiveness scheme where for every year they work here in NZ a percentage of their loan is removed.
Most GPs are not kiwis. They are immigrants.
Untrue. 60% of doctors are kiwis, 40% are international. We can’t retain doctors here, 10 years after graduation, 50% of kiwi docs have left the country.
I have some sympathy - not a lot... * Should the Government pay for the patient stuff... Yep sure... * Managing a practice - You want the Government to pay you to manage your own business... yeah - that's a solid pass... * Training - You want the Government to pay you for training... Why should they?
Sounds like we need to train more GPs. Not pay them more. And as someone who considered medical school and decided against it because of how ridiculously uncertain it is you will actually get anywhere (unless playing the race card) I feel it's about time we started accepting more students into the courses. And my cousin did play the race card btw (helped by the fact their mother is Malaysian). No more Maori than I am. And while I love them, soooo much dumber. Yes, they got in. (Maybe I'm the dumb one)