Urgent Doctors 'streamlined'

Daytime services at the Dunedin Urgent Doctors and Accident Centre are being "streamlined" as the centre looks to "align our GP resource with current demand", Dr Kim Maiai says.

Asked if that meant the centre would be reducing its two GPs covering daytime services to one, Mr Maiai, who is chairman of the Dunedin General Practitioners Society and After Hours Guild, would not comment further, as the process was "still running its course".

"I don't want to prejudice that process.

"We have an ongoing commitment to our guild members to run a comprehensive service, but we also have to run a service which is sustainable."

The centre stopped paying GPs covering night shifts for six months last year, as it struggled with lower patient numbers during the recession.

After an increase in patient numbers during 2008, patient numbers in 2009 dropped back to numbers similar to those seen in 2007.

Payments were reinstated in December, but at only half the $60-an-hour payment doctors used to receive.

Then practice manager Belinda Watkins, who has since resigned, said the payment amount would be revisited next month.

The centre works as a co-operative venture among about 65 Dunedin doctors, excluding those at Mornington Health Centre which provides its own after-hours care.

Mr Maiai said the clinic's upgraded fracture clinic continued to be well used and it was staffed separately.

Former Student Job Search chief executive Martin Chamberlain has been appointed to replace Ms Watkins and began at the centre last week.

"[Mr Chamberlain] is bringing a lot of commercial and non-government organisation experience to the role and I think he will be an excellent replacement," Mr Maiai said.

edith.schofield@odt.co.nz