ProCare Welcomes The Budget Announcement For Healthcare Reforms

Leading healthcare provider ProCare has today welcomed the announcement of $5.854m in the next financial year for the establishment of Comprehensive Primary Care Teams.

Bindi Norwell, Chief Executive at ProCare says: “It is great news to see funding earmarked in today’s Budget for the development of comprehensive primary care teams. This is where the future of primary care is heading and is what we’ve been working towards as an organisation for more than a year, since the initial health reforms were announced.

“This forward-thinking approach to healthcare puts people at the heart of primary care and means less travelling between locations to visit different health and wellbeing providers.

ProCare also supports allocations for equitable health outcomes in Primary Care.

Dr Allan Moffitt, ProCare Clinical Director and GP at The Fono, says: “It’s encouraging to see additional funding earmarked to equitably allocate Primary Care funding across General Practices with large high-needs populations. We have been expecting a modified capitation formula for several years and this is well overdue. It will be interesting to see how this directly impacts practices on a day-to-day basis and what the further details are.”

“We also welcome the funding allocated to programmes that support affordable access to Primary Care for low-income New Zealanders such as the Zero Fees for Under 14s and have been proposing changes to the Very Low Cost Access scheme.

“With the rising costs of living it’s imperative we keep healthcare affordable so people can access the care they need,” says Moffitt.

However, ProCare is questioning how the $4.794 million allocated in year one for the Service Integration of locality provider networks will work.

“While just shy of $5 million sounds like a lot, the reality is that this figure is meant to cover network integration and change management to enable the delivery of joint, multidisciplinary services within locality provider networks and back-office roles for bringing providers and services together to complement local comprehensive primary care teams. This appears to be quite an ask for the level of funding, meaning it may be thinly spread across primary care providers. It’s important that this can deliver on the objectives in relation to this significant change in the health sector,” he concludes.

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