The After Hours Primary Health Care Working Party (the Working Party) made fifteen recommendations aimed at ensuring accessible and effective after hours primary health care services and strengthening their resilience.
As required by their Terms of Reference, the members of the Working Party developed these recommendations “with the assumption that no further primary health care strategy funding will be available to support after hours services, but there may be opportunities to better utilise available primary health care and District Health Board (DHB) baseline funding to support after hours primary health care”.
Their key recommendations are that:
- DHBs in collaboration with PHOs and After Hours service providers develop and implement a planning and funding strategy for after hours primary health care for their district for all service users;
- DHBs are urged to commence work on their District After Hours Services Plans immediately without waiting for the planning requirement to be incorporated into the District Annual Planning process for the 2006/07 year; and
- accountability for 24/7 primary health care service delivery should remain with PHOs. PHOs must demonstrate to the DHB that they have 24/7 arrangements in place for all service users.
Key Results
The After Hours Primary Health Care Working Party (the Working Party) has made 15 recommendations aimed at ensuring accessible and effective after hours primary health care services and strengthening their resilience to meet people's urgent need for care.
The Working Party believes these recommendations, if implemented, will meet the project objectives stated in its Terms of Reference.
These are to:
develop and recommend a national policy framework as it relates to after hours primary health care that:
- provides clarity to practitioners, after hours service providers, Primary Health Organisations (PHOs), District Health Boards (DHBs) and the Ministry of Health about their respective responsibilities for the provision of after hours primary health care; and
- creates an environment that promotes locally developed solutions to the provision of services, particularly over night
- The Working Party considers that DHBs, in collaboration with PHOs and after hours service providers, must take a lead role in the planning of after hours service development for their districts. This will require exploration of different funding approaches to ensure resilience of these services so that their communities can have confidence that after hours primary health care services will be available to them when they need them.
- Responsibility for delivering primary health care services that are accessible 24 hours, seven days a week (24/7) should remain with PHOs. PHOs will need to demonstrate to the DHB that they have 24/7 arrangements in place. This can be achieved either by subcontracting with their member practices or by contracting other after hours service providers.
- It is important that people appreciate that 24/7 primary health care does not mean 24/7 access to routine non-urgent care. After hours primary health care is designed to meet the needs of patients that cannot be safely deferred until regular general practice services are next available.
- As accessible, effective and resilient after hours services have continued to be an issue for primary health care, DHBs, along with their respective PHOs and after hours service providers, are urged to start planning now.