The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners welcomes today's statement by Professor Des Gorman of Health Workforce New Zealand that GPs need to be a key focus in future medical workforce planning. Professor Gorman said: "If you ask me what group of the senior doctors I am most anxious about it's actually the GPs. That's where the utility sits and that's where if we are to have a cost effective, sustainable and affordable health system we need to put our emphasis."

College President, Dr Harry Pert says: "We share the concern of our hospital specialist colleagues about medical workforce shortages and support the call by the Association of Senior Medical Specialists (ASMS) for a more strategic approach to medical workforce planning. We look forward to working towards this with the newly formed Health Workforce New Zealand and our colleagues across the sector to increase the number of specialist trained doctors in New Zealand."

"There is compelling national and international evidence to show the benefits of strong primary care - countries that are able to deliver high quality services at primary care level have healthier citizens at lower cost to taxpayers and more equitable health outcomes. It is vitally important that New Zealand trains and retains more doctors with specialist training, including doctors specialising in General Practice. The College's priority is to ensure that New Zealand follows the evidence base by investing appropriately in general practice training. This will ensure that our equally important hospital specialist colleagues can focus on the secondary services that they are best placed to provide," explains Dr Pert.

"Increased training places for general practitioners and initiatives like the bonding scheme have been positive step, but there is still a long way to go. Funding models need to be addressed, because doctors undertaking specialist training in general practice still fund a considerable proportion of their own training, unlike their colleagues in other medical specialties."