Better Sooner More Convenient Primary Care - New Zealand Doctor

providing the majority of care). That is, referral to and/or engagement of workers, other than
the GP and practice/rural nurse, in a patient's care, will not see a transfer of responsibility for
care away from their general practice team. Nor will the involvement of more health
professionals see the proliferation of separate sets of clinical notes, or of parallel but
disconnected care pathways.
The augmented workforce of medical, nursing and allied health care professionals will
nevertheless see themselves, and be seen by others, primarily and intrinsically as part of that
IFHC team; they will talk about „us‟ rather than „them‟ when referring to these centres.
The patients‟ health needs will be cared for, according to their complexity/severity, by the
member(s) of the IFHC team best suited to meeting these needs as per the following diagram 3 :
As members of a single primary/community services team, health professionals at the IFHC will:
have the same catchment population boundaries for the purpose of workload and
resource planning
use common appointment booking systems (eg. rather than referring patients to each
other, will be able to book appointments directly)
use a single common clinical record
develop patient pathways for those requiring multidisciplinary care
develop shared policies and processes
work together in a partnership model.
An IFHC might comprise a multi-disciplinary team that looks like this:
3
Sourced from Primary Health Care Advisory Council. Progress Report of the Council‟s work to provide advice to the
Ministry of Health and District Health Boards on Primary Health Care Service Models. Nov 2009
Business case EoI V38 AC 25Feb10 Page 29