Rural Northland general practices are reporting a sharp rise in missed appointments since petrol and diesel prices climbed earlier this year, with one Kaikohe clinic recording an increase of more than 400 percent on the same period last year and doctors warning that patients are now choosing between filling the tank and seeing the doctor.
Broadway Health, which runs clinics in Kaikohe, Kaitāia and Waipapa, told RNZ it logged 59 no-shows in the weeks after fuel prices jumped, compared with 11 in the same period a year earlier. Chief executive Jessie Hoskins said the calls she is now hearing from reception staff make the trade-off explicit, with families ringing in to cancel because they need the money in the petrol tank for the school run or for a job interview rather than a half-hour appointment.
The pattern is wider than one practice. The Northern Advocate reported that the same Kaikohe clinic saw missed appointments rise from 7 between February and April 2024 to 59 in the same months this year, a 743 percent jump. Mahitahi Hauora, the Primary Health Organisation that represents 32 general practices across Northland, said the trend has shown up at member clinics across the region in the past six weeks, with petrol vouchers running out and outreach budgets stretched thinner than usual.
Mahitahi Hauora chief executive Jensen Webber said access to a GP should not depend on what was in the fuel tank, and that the organisation was now lobbying for emergency petrol voucher funding, more support for community transport in rural towns, and recognition of fuel cost as a measurable barrier inside national primary care performance frameworks. Webber said the issue was being treated by some funders as a temporary spike, but the on-the-ground reality at member clinics was a slow drift of patients away from regular care that could take years to undo.
Ngāti Hine Health Trust, which covers Whangārei and the Mid North, reported a similar pattern. Chief executive Tamati Shepherd-Wipiiti said the trust began noticing increases in no-shows around five to six weeks ago and has responded by expanding its marae-based clinics to twelve sessions a month so that nurses and doctors travel out to small communities rather than expecting patients to drive in. The trust is also bulking up the medicines kept at outreach clinics so a single visit can cover both the consultation and the prescription, cutting the number of trips a patient has to make.
The price shock began in late February. According to figures cited by Mahitahi Hauora, 91 octane petrol is up 31 percent since 28 February and diesel is up 88 percent over the same stretch, with the price moves following the start of the joint US and Israel campaign against Iran and tighter shipping conditions through the Strait of Hormuz. For a patient driving in from Taheke or Ōkaihau, the cost of the round trip to a Kaikohe doctor has gone from roughly twenty dollars to closer to fifty, before any prescription, parking, or follow-up.
The patients quoted in the RNZ story put it in plain terms. Max, who lives in Taheke, said he now only comes into town once a week because driving in any more often is no longer affordable. Shanae, a mother in a family of five sharing a single vehicle, described the situation as quite stressful, with appointments slotted around school pick-ups and her partner’s work. Shravika, a caregiver in Ōkaihau, said elderly residents she helps are putting off both GP visits and pharmacy runs and asking neighbours to collect prescriptions for them so they only have to fund one drive into town.
Northland is not unique in geography or demographics, and the same dynamic is likely playing out wherever a single car has to cover a large rural catchment and where petrol forms a meaningful share of a low household budget. Stats NZ household economic data has long shown that low-income families spend a much larger proportion of their weekly take-home pay on transport than wealthier households, simply because they cannot avoid the trip. When the price of the trip jumps a third in two months, the discretionary edge of that budget is the first thing to give, and a non-urgent GP appointment, a follow-up blood test, or a routine prescription pickup is exactly the kind of spend that gets pushed into next week.
The Northland clinics are not waiting for a government response. As well as the marae sessions, Broadway Health is paying out petrol vouchers from its own reserves, and pharmacy staff in Kaikohe have been hand delivering medicines to households that cannot make the drive. Mahitahi Hauora has been calling other regional Primary Health Organisations to compare numbers and is preparing a national submission asking for a temporary increase in outreach funding tied to fuel prices, on the basis that even a modest top-up now is cheaper than the cost of treating chronic conditions that have been left to run on.
The longer term concern, voiced by every clinical leader quoted, is that the patients dropping off the schedule are not the ones with mild colds. They are the ones with diabetes who need quarterly checks, the older patients on multiple medications who need a regular review, and the parents of small children who would normally bring a sick toddler in early rather than wait. Each of those missed visits adds risk, and that risk compounds quietly until it shows up in an emergency department or in a hospital admission that costs the public system many multiples of what a routine GP appointment would have.
Have you put off a doctor or pharmacy visit in the last couple of months because of the cost of getting there? Has your local GP introduced an outreach clinic, transport help, or home delivery? Tell us in the comments below — we read every one and the more on-the-ground detail we get from around the country, the better we can keep covering this.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
Leave a Reply