Primary Care Planning

The Health and Disability services most used by our communities are primary care services such as general practice.

The primary care services developed the 'Better, Sooner, More Convienient (BSMC)' programme to deliver a more personalised primary health care system that provides services closer to home to keep Kiwi's healthy.

Patients, typically those with long term conditions, are included in the review of processes and care plans. The result is a more proactive and clear approach to working with patients as partners in their health management, whereby a patient can take action when they perceive the need to, and support is available before the patient's health declines to the point of requiring hospital intervention.

Integrated Family Health Centres (IFHC) aim to deliver some of these services closer to home and have been in place in some larger GP medical centres as well as in some smaller but holistic health providers e.g. Māori health providers. Under the Ministry of Health's guidance, IFHC will provide a 'one stop' (holistic) health service on a sufficiently large scale to allow a different service model for the management of long term conditions as well as to allow hospital and primary care clinicians to collaborate in new and efficient ways.