Primary Care sector

Primary care is the first point of access for most people to the health system.

It plays a key role in preventing illness, treating disease early, providing person centred continuity of care over time, and reducing the impact of long-term conditions.

It’s vital all New Zealander’s have timely access to quality primary health care, when and where they need it. 

Challenges and strengths

The primary health care system faces significant challenges in ensuring access and quality of care for all New Zealanders, including:

Workforce

  • We have a worsening GP shortage, nursing retention issues from pay disparities, workforce burnout >40%, and constrained use of the wider clinical workforce.

Clinical administration

  • The burden of clinical administration is impacting on the time available for patient consultations.

Enrolment barriers

  • An estimated 34% of general practices have closed books. 

Cost

  • In 2023 about half a million New Zealanders didn’t use a GP service because of cost barriers – this is worse for Māori & Pacific people

Waiting times

  • About 1 million New Zealanders didn’t use a GP service because of long waiting times for an appointment

Capitation 

  • Funding that has fallen behind costs and that requires better targeting.

Scale

  • New models and innovations exist but there are few mechanisms to scale them up to have national impact.

Digital support

  • Patient management systems that lack modern interoperability features.

Addressing these challenges is crucial for improving population health and achieving equity in health outcomes across New Zealand.

We also know there are great strengths across the teams and people that deliver primary care services and the communities they serve.

Despite the challenges, many people continue to experience person centred, caring and clinically excellent care every day from primary care professionals across the motu. Around 95% of New Zealanders are enrolled with a general practice, and GP teams (including urgent care teams) deliver over 24 million encounters per year.

Together we need to draw on those strengths, address the challenges and ensure everyone can receive the care they deserve.

Our response

Health New Zealand is working with primary care services, people who use primary care and other health system partners to prioritise a targeted programme of improvements to strengthen the role of primary care as the first point of access when and where needed for all New Zealanders.

The objectives we’re working towards are:

  • A strong primary and community care sector that is more accessible for all people, with a focus on meeting the needs of priority populations.
  • An urgent care and after-hours set of sustainable services in urban settings that are accessible, convenient, mitigate demand on emergency departments and contribute to equitable outcomes across NZ. 
  • A rural unplanned, urgent care system that is responsive to rural community needs and results in equity of both access and outcomes. 
  • Responsive future focused telehealth service that improves equity of access and outcomes.
  • Integrated pharmacy services effectively responding to patient needs and system pressures.

We are partnering with ACC to deliver on our commitment to Urgent Urban and Rural Care.

What we’re doing

Primary Care

Primary Care

Meso-level developments: 

  • Designing the future of meso-level organisations, with an initial focus on the future functions and subsequently implementing future requirements.  
    Meso-level services describes the layer of support between the commissioner and funder of care services (Health NZ) and care service delivery (primary care services), including Primary Health Organisations.

Data and Digital including ICT modernisation: 

  • Supporting the implementation of modern, secure, and interoperable Primary ICT services, develop a primary care data repository and support data reporting.

Workforce:

  • Prioritising Health NZ investment into the development of primary, community and rural workforces, aligned to future workforce models and associated models of care

Pharmacy:

  • Improving access to enhanced community pharmacy services

Capitation Re-weighting:

  • Designing revised capitation population cohorts and weights to better reflect population health needs and achieve better outcomes.

Rural Unplanned Urgent Care re-design

Rural Unplanned Urgent Care re-design

Redesigning rural unplanned and urgent care, including Primary Response in Medical Emergencies (PRIME) to provide more equitable access.

Find out more on Rural Unplanned Urgent Care re-design page.

Healthline and related services review

Healthline and related services review

Reviewing the direction of the National Telehealth Service and other community and primary care telehealth services.

Find out more on Telehealth Service Review page.

Urgent Care

Urgent Care

Designing an urgent care and after-hours set of sustainable services that are accessible, convenient, mitigate demand on emergency departments and contribute to equitable outcomes across NZ.

Primary Care Development Programme Key Deliverables

Get involved

We can’t do this work without input from primary care providers.

As the programme progresses, we’ll let you know how you can engage with the design activity across all workstreams.

In the meantime, if you want to know more, please email: Primary.Care@tewhatuora.govt.nz