Ongoing use of the Pinnacle rural accelerated chest pain pathway by general practices has highlighted how point of care testing can improve health equity in rural communities, and reduce hospital referrals to overloaded emergency departments.
Read moreWhere possible, we encourage practices to keep MMR immunisation a priority in conjunction with other timely vaccinations for influenza and COVID-19. To support practices with this, data lists of children with less than two recorded MMR’s on the National Immunisation Record have been made available to all practices today.
Read moreAfter some discussion with the board, we have decided to roll forward the 2021-2022 quality plan with no changes for the next twelve months. The goals in the plan remain highly relevant to national and regional objectives.
Read moreInitially published by NZ Doctor, Jo Scott-Jones discusses what you can do to reduce the number of phone calls, prescriptions and consultations for respiratory illnesses this winter.
Read moreESR, New Zealand's Crown Research Institute, is currently recruiting for community respiratory virus surveillance. This surveillance system involves GPs taking swabs from a small number of patients throughout the week who present with influenza-like illness. These are then sent to labs to be tested for respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, influenza, RSV and others.
Read moreThe Minister of Health’s briefing last week focused on new workforce initiatives to relieve some frontline health worker pressure, in the short-term. Te Whatu Ora, Te Aka Whai Ora and Manatū Hauora (the Ministry of Health), are working together to roll out the following key initiatives.
Read moreHistorically, the district nursing service in North Taranaki has been able to offer an evening service within the New Plymouth city boundary between 6-10pm. Due to staffing issues, the team has not been able to offer this service since late 2021 and it has now been discontinued.
Read moreTe Whatu Ora Taranaki applications are currently accessed by logging into a Citrix environment. Te Whatu Ora Taranaki is upgrading to a new Citrix environment providing greater security against cyber-attacks. To continue to access clinical information all users must be in the new Citrix environment by 1 September 2022.
Read moreSt John asks healthcare professionals requiring an ambulance for your patient to call 0800 262 665. For emergencies outside your facility/medical centre it is still appropriate to call 111.
Read moreRead the latest from GPNZ including a message from the Chair Dr Jeff Lowe, health reform updates, ngā mihi Dr Bloomfield, COVID-19 and winter wellness updates and more.
Read moreAll practices have access to clinical dashboards allowing them to deep dive into ‘flu eligibility, diabetes care, COVID-19 care (with recently updated therapeutics eligibility), enrolment and some standards around cardiovascular disease (CVD). Practices can benchmark themselves against other Pinnacle practices in their district or the network, but tools like the recently updated EPiC CVD dashboard allow you to explore prescribing for secondary prevention of CVD benchmarked against national data.
Read morePharmaceutical supplier API has notified Te Pātaka Whaioranga – Pharmac they have closed their Auckland manufacturing plant and are withdrawing from the New Zealand market. API supplied around 21 funded medications in New Zealand, including dexamfetamine 5 mg tablets. It is expected stock of the API brand of dexamfetamine will begin to run out during August 2022.
Read moreA change has been made to the Best Practice lead notification eReferral form for notifying the Public Health Unit (PHU) of high lead levels. The lead notification drop down box has been inactivated and instead a link can be found at the bottom of the form under 'Exclusion criteria'.
Read moreRural general practices will have received a Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand proposal to offer telehealth support. This has been met with a flood of positive replies. Zoom meetings have been set up to further discuss the telehealth support proposal.
View eventRural general practices will have received a Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand proposal to offer telehealth support. This has been met with a flood of positive replies. Zoom meetings have been set up to further discuss the telehealth support proposal.
View eventThe Ministry of Health has introduced standards for B4SC training, recommending 24 hours of initial training for all new B4SC nurses. The assessments as well as supervised practice makes up for the hours uncounted.
View eventTe Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand has created this MMR talking points document to support the rangatahi vaccination team inform their kōrero with rangatahi when running hauora events.
The Therapeutic Technical Advisory Group (TAG) was convened by the MOH in August 2021 to provide expert advice on existing and emerging medicines for use in the management of COVID-19.
A facility development fund specifically to provide support in the form of grants for practices in the network investing in new buildings or upgrading their facilities.