Chief Executive's Report
VINCE BARRY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE
PEGASUS HEALTH (CHARITABLE) LTD
Continued support has been provided for General Practice teams and practitioners in the last year. This has included education and resources to assist practices in achieving foundation standards. Policy templates, guidelines and checklists have been made available, as well as access to our Quality Facilitator Martin Carrell. Two practices achieved the Foundation Standard and were presented with their certificates from the Royal NZ College of General Practitioners in June 2016.
We also held our first Administration and Practice Management Excellence forum. Its purpose was to help facilitate the development of high performing General Practice teams, by equipping practice management and administration staff with the knowledge, skills and ability to better support and manage their practices. You can read more about this, and other stories from the year, in the rest of this Annual Report.
As this report goes “to print”, the Board will be considering a proposal for brokerage services to further support General Practitioners with locum cover, after hours shift trading, business and HR advice. We will be able to announce this exciting development soon.
Improving after hours cover for Canterbury General Practices has been a major theme in the last 12 months for Pegasus Health. The most public of these efforts has been a campaign, delivered in conjunction with the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB), to direct people to call their General Practice 24 hours a day to access either their Practice or advice through Homecare Medical’s nurse triage service. The campaign is a reminder to people that their first port of call for medical advice should always be their own General Practice.
The after-hours nurse triage service is proving very effective at giving people the advice they need to manage their condition or tide them over until they can visit their General Practice the next day. The service is also identifying people who need to be seen as soon as possible by a doctor at the 24 Hour Surgery or Christchurch Hospital’s emergency department. Since the ‘Care Around the Clock’ campaign started, there has been an increase in the number of calls to the nurse advice line in Canterbury.
In the last year, Pegasus Health has also purchased a new building at 401 Madras St to house the 24 Hour Surgery and Pegasus Health support services. While the 24 Hour Surgery building has served General Practice and the Canterbury public well for many years, it is now well passed its use-by-date. If we had retained the building, it would have required significant refurbishment and even then its design would not have been well suited to the needs of a modern Surgery.
To ensure that the new building works well for everyone who visits and works in it, we have held a number of user group meetings, involving patients, General Practitioners, and staff, to discuss what people want and need in the new facility. We have also done our very best to look into the future and see what General Practices will need from the 24 Hour Surgery.
When buying the new building, it also made sense to house all Pegasus Health facilities under one roof, for ease of administration and to reduce costs. The Pegasus support services teams will move into the new building in October 2016, while the 24 Hour Surgery will shift in April/May 2017, when the building’s refurbishment is complete.
I am delighted to report that Homecare Medical has had a very successful first year under the direction of Pegasus Health and ProCare. Our relationship with the Ministry of Health has also been excellent in getting this complex national telehealth service up and running through call centres in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. In the last year, Homecare Medical has managed more than 500,000 calls. Following the start of the ‘Care Around the Clock’ campaign there was a steady increase in calls throughout August. This augurs well for when we introduce a new campaign, as part of our shift to the new site, and encourage Cantabrians to call before they go to the 24 Hour Surgery.
In other news, I am pleased to advise that HealthOne, the shared health record developed by Pegasus Health with CDHB and Orion Health, has now been rolled out in the Canterbury, South Canterbury, West Coast and Southern districts. The final South Island DHB, Nelson/Marlborough, is timed to receive it for next April. We will then have the entire South Island on both the Electronic Referral Management System (ERMS) and HealthOne. Laura Fergusson Trust, Insight, Access Community Health and St John have also come on board. Reports from those using the system have been exciting, with HealthOne significantly reducing the time and stress involved for primary and secondary clinicians in obtaining accurate, up-to-date patient information.
Evaluation of the Patient Management System (PMS) has taken longer than we would have anticipated but this extra time has allowed us to thoroughly examine prospective PMS options and have a lot of user input. We expect the Board to be considering the best option to present to the network in late October. In the meantime, we are trialling the migration of data across to prospective systems and in early October will have four practices working on a new system, alongside Medtech. It will be good to receive their feedback as part of the evaluation process.
In the last year, Pegasus Health has continued to support and encourage General Practice teams to re-think and re-design the services they provide under the Integrated Family Health Services programme. One of the key elements of the programme is that patients receive services at the right time from people with the right level of experience. Many thanks to IFHS project managers Jan Edwards and Mark Henare, for their ongoing work with General Practice teams as we are now engaging with 50% of the practices in the network.
Over the next couple of years, we are expecting to see significant changes in primary mental health services as a result of additional government investment. Pegasus Health is involved at a national and local level to ensure that General Practice has strong representation and that we do our very best for the implementation of a truly responsive system. We were delighted to find that some of an additional $12 million allocated to mental health in the 2016 Budget was assigned to establishing a mental health triage system under Homecare Medical. This new service is expected to benefit about 45,000 New Zealanders each year. It will be phased in, starting early in 2017, with the intention that the entire country will be covered by the end of 2017.
Advocacy work is underway at a national level with our N4 colleagues - ProCare, Midlands and Compass. We are raising awareness of the funding challenges facing General Practice and the inequity of the current Very Low Cost Access (VLCA) model. The desired outcome of this campaign is to successfully influence Government to review the current funding model and to find a solution that ensures General Practice services are affordable and sustainable. Current indications show that this drive is gaining some traction, with the Ministry of Health now reviewing options for future funding support for General Practice.
As always, great partnerships are essential for Pegasus Health to function well. We have been advocating on a range of General Practice-related issues with national colleagues; we have a strong relationship with CDHB; and are forever grateful for the support provided to General Practice by agencies such as Nurse Maude in caring for people with chronic conditions.
I am also grateful for the ongoing guidance and hard work of the Pegasus Health Charitable Board and the senior leadership team. The next year will be an exciting one and I am greatly looking forward to the many changes on the horizon that will benefit General Practice and Canterbury residents.