Better Sooner More Convenient Primary Care - New Zealand Doctor
Better Sooner More Convenient Primary Care - New Zealand Doctor
Better Sooner More Convenient Primary Care - New Zealand Doctor
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Appendix Six: Integration - DHB community based services<br />
1. Aspirational statement:<br />
West Coasters with complex health needs will receive co-ordinated and consistent care from<br />
their health providers working together as an integrated health team.<br />
2 Project overview<br />
This project establishes integrated health teams inclusive of general practice based primary<br />
health practitioners and non general practice based community health nurses 42 and allied health<br />
staff, to ensure the provision of integrated and co-ordinated multi disciplinary care and a<br />
holistic approach to meeting the populations' needs.<br />
3 Problem definition<br />
Traditional medical centres, or general practices, care for their enrolled populations. Some of<br />
those same patients are cared for by district nurses, and other community based nursing and<br />
allied health professionals, both as hospital inpatients and post discharge, sometime for an<br />
extended time period. But the two systems of care are not routinely or systematically well<br />
connected together. They operate to a large extent as parallel systems of care. When the two<br />
systems do intersect, it may be purposeful, eg. a GP refers a patient to district nursing, or it<br />
may occur by accident, eg. one individual is employed as both a practice nurse and a clinical nurse<br />
specialist, or a district nurse and a GP happen to know each other and have a working<br />
relationship. This work stream aims to better connect these two significant health care<br />
workforces, and to do so systematically and fundamentally, to ensure patients will benefit from<br />
co-ordinated and consistent care.<br />
Key issues identified as a result are:<br />
Lack of co-ordination of care across the different systems of care and difficulties for<br />
the patient navigating through the system:<br />
- communication gaps between primary and secondary health providers (referral,<br />
discharge, treatment)<br />
- duplication of care, and consequent unnecessary costs<br />
42 "community health nurses" is defined broadly; it is taken to include: district nurses, public health nurses, rural nurse<br />
specialists, neighbourhood nurses, immunisation coordination & outreach nurses, Well Child & Plunket nurses and clinical<br />
nurse specialists (cardiology, respiratory, oncology, palliative, diabetes etc)<br />
Business case appendices V12 AC 25Feb2010 Page 52