On this page
This work is part of the ‘Rural unplanned care’ workstream of our Primary Care Development Programme.
Go to Primary Care Development Programme page
Established over 20 years ago, the PRIME (Primary Response in Medical Emergencies) model comprises doctors, nurse practitioners and registered nurses to provide a level of care in rural and remote areas to support Emergency Ambulance Service.
Technology changes, workforce shortages, medicine improvements, inequitable health access and outcomes have contributed to a redesign of rural urgent and unplanned care, with PRIME at the core.
About PRIME
The PRIME (Primary Response in Medical Emergencies) service is jointly funded by Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora and ACC. The service is administered by Hato Hone St John ambulance service.
The PRIME model provides a coordinated response to, and management of, emergencies in rural locations.
The ambulance service is supported by rural GPs and/or nurses if response times could be significant or when higher level medical skills are needed.
How we’ll do this
We’re partnering with ACC and Hato Hone St John to ensure our work builds on the existing PRIME work programmes and networks to ensure an effective, constructive, collaborative, and open design process.
The Rural Unplanned and Urgent Care (RUUC) Advisory Group has representation from across the health sector to ensure an inclusive, collaborative, and transparent approach is taken to informing proposed future models.
We're connecting with a broad range of stakeholders, including primary health care and ambulance providers.
Who we’re working with
Local voices and ideas are critical to informing this work.
We’re committed to understanding the needs, learnings, experiences, and perspectives of stakeholders, iwi, rural communities and whānau.
Keeping you updated
We’ll keep stakeholders, partners, and the community updated with what’s happening, as this work progresses.
August update
Video transcript
Kia ora. My name is Chris Palmer, I’m a System Design Manager at Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora, and I’m part of the wonderful team leading the redesign of the Rural Unplanned Urgent Care work.
This video is the second in a monthly series to give you some updates as we go, to let you know what we’re doing, and how it’s going.
We’ll have three key updates each time, so let’s jump in.
The first key update is a little around what’s keeping us true and how do we know that what we’re designing is going to be the right thing. We’ve got 8 guiding principles.
Some of those are patient centered. They get us to think about things like how we keep patients in the community, with their whānau more often, and avoid taking people to hospital where it’s safe, where we can do that.
We’ve got some that are provider centered. They get us to think about things like how we are making sure that providers have the right equipment, and the best equipment to be able to provide that level of care for their communities.
And we’ve got a commissioning centered principle that gets us to think about is what we’re designing safe and sustainable for the long term?
The second key update is all around who we’re working with and in the first video you would have heard from Dan who told us a bit about the Rural Unplanned Urgent Care Advisory Group. A great mix, a lot of experience, and they’ve been fantastic. As we get more into the detail of the design, we’re bringing together a few design groups that are going to focus on targeted areas of what we’re designing. We’ll keep you up to date with those as we go.
The third update for today is also around who we’re working with, and I was lucky enough in the last week to spent some time in Marton with Hato Hone St John, and also the GP practice and the PRIME team there. It’s so important for us to get out of the office, into these communities, to hear what’s really happening, what’s working, what isn’t, and to know what we need to do to redesign something better. So, thank you for everyone that I’ve spoken with, thank you for your time.
That’s all from me today, stay safe and take care. Kia ora.
July update
Video transcript
Kia ora my names Dan and I’m one of the System Design Managers for Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora and I’m part of a fantastic group leading the re-design of the Rural Unplanned Urgent Care piece of work. These monthly videos here will provide you with 3 key updates on the work as we progress. So let’s go!
First key update
Understanding what we need this project to achieve – we have been reflecting on previous reviews and also speaking with a range of people to better understand the experiences and perspectives of patients, whānau, clinicians, providers within rural communities. These conversations have helped inform what we need to achieve with this piece of work.
Second key update
Project establishment – over the past few months we have been working to better understand urgent care services within rural communities and we have been working to set up our Rural Unplanned Urgent Care (RUUC) Advisory Group. We have a range of experience on this advisory group from Māori health providers, lived experienced, Primary Health Organisations, Rural general practices, PRIME providers, ambulance and much more. This advisory group will continue to meet on a monthly basis.
This leads me to my third key update which is the first meeting for this advisory group – the point of discussion or the main topic if you like was predominantly around whakawhanaungatanga, so the process of getting to know one another but just as importantly, understanding our environment, what we need to achieve and what this project is all about. As this advisory group continues to meet, we will provide you with the key updates through this channel.
That’s all for now, take care, stay safe.
Timeline
From May 2024 we expect to:
- better understand how rural unplanned urgent care is currently operating across the country
- identify service viability challenges for PRIME providers
From October 2024 we expect to:
- identify proposed models and assess our future options to improve rural unplanned urgent care
- finalise discussion document for consultation.
By February 2025 we expect to:
- have a final decision document on the future rural unplanned urgent care model.
Contact us
If you’d like to ask a question, subscribe to our communications, or get in touch, please email: primary.care@tewhatuora.govt.nz.