Chair’s Report
Pegasus Health (Charitable) Ltd
Professor Les Toop
From L-R: Jane Huria, Dr Sharon Ashmore, Dr Harsed Chima, Peter Townsend, Prof Les Toop (Chair), Dr Simon Wynn Thomas, Dr John Coughlan, Dr Gayle O’Duffy, Prof Andrew Hornblow (Absent: Nicky Scott) (Dr Hillary Gray resigned during the year).
It was fitting that after exactly 25 years since beginning, Pegasus Health and the 24 Hour Surgery moved into new premises. The new, joint location will allow us to provide better care for our patients and better support for our member practices, well into the future.
The new 24 Hour Surgery has been carefully designed to allow a high standard of clinical care for patients and provide a much better experience for both users and those of us working there. The logistics of the overnight transition from Bealey Avenue to Madras Street, whilst providing uninterrupted care, was meticulously thought through and impressively executed, requiring an immense amount of behind-the-scenes work from the team at the 24 Hour Surgery, as well as Pegasus support staff. Congratulations and thanks to everyone involved.
Overall the individual commitment from GPs to provide after-hours shift cover has reduced, thanks to the increased number of younger colleagues now available for the roster and the good numbers of highly competent employed medical officers. Locum cover will hopefully be easier to arrange with the increasing adoption of the new Pegasus locum-finding service BeeFoundNZ. This is one of a range of services being offered through Pegasus’ Support Plus initiative and it is planned to extend the facility to include practice nurse and administrative cover. GP Plus is another new offering that will assist in maintaining a strong workforce at the 24 Hour Surgery and in practices. This service is focused on recruiting doctors and finding placements for them in Canterbury practices. Each doctor is placed into a fixed term position in a practice for three days a week. They are also required to work a weekend shift at the 24 Hour Surgery.
With a maturing workforce, it is important that we look ahead and engage young colleagues, knowing that they will become our future clinical leaders. In the last year, efforts have been made to engage with and involve young doctors in discussions about the future of Pegasus Health and general practice in Canterbury. We intend to ramp this up and actively plan for clinical leader development. There are also leadership opportunities that from time-to-time become available through the Pegasus education programme, HealthPathways co-development and the Canterbury Clinical Network.
At a national level, along with our sister organisations, we are pushing hard for a full review of primary care funding, towards a model that targets available funding to those who would benefit the most; that supports care closer to home; that delivers more equitable outcomes; and acknowledges the increasing administrative burden that has resulted from moving prioritisation activity from hospital to general practice. Support is also needed to deliver innovations in models of more integrated interdisciplinary care.
On your behalf I, together with the other large network chairs and their CEOs and other national representative bodies, have been part of many discussions on the issues that need addressing. We have been speaking with government and opposition policy makers and politicians to advocate on behalf of our patients for high quality, sustainable general practice/primary care. There is growing consensus that we need a smarter, more equitable model that encourages new and more efficient ways of managing increasing demand, whilst maintaining the core values of continuity and comprehensiveness of personalised evidence informed care - the hallmarks of quality family practice.
The pace of technological change seems to be entering another exponential phase and General Practice will appropriately and inevitably be caught up in the latest wave, as will all individuals and society in general. Our challenge is to harness these tools to enhance our work rather than (as some would have us believe) replace the essence of good General Practice – our one to one (or one to few) relationships that we have built up and cherish with our patients. Artificial Intelligence is amongst us already and again there will be many opportunities to harness this self-learning technology to free us up to have more time do that which we do best.
We plan that Pegasus Health will remain a leader in technological change, and that innovation in our world is seen as “constructive” rather than “disruptive”. Our involvement as 50% shareholders (along with Procare in Auckland) in the Homecare Medical (HCM) group is proving to be very successful. It is another example of technological innovation facilitating immediate personal connection that is linked back to general practice/primary care and the delivery of a world class service to our patients (throughout New Zealand) at times of need and stress. You can read more about HCM later in the Annual Report.
I am proud that Pegasus Health continues to be a major innovator in healthcare in this country. Our world-leading model for designing and delivering primary care education has stood the test of time. It is receiving increasing national attention and is being rolled out in several other areas of the country. HealthOne, our system for electronically sharing clinical patient information, is now available throughout the South Island and we will be looking at opportunities in the next year for it to have even wider application. The Electronic Referrals Management System (ERMS) has been similarly successful in wider application throughout the South Island. These initiatives are good examples of our strong and mutually beneficial relationship in co-development with Canterbury District Health Board and others.
Our focus on pastoral care for members is a special feature of Pegasus Health and showed it's worth at the end of last year, when the organisation was able to offer support to General Practice teams coping with the aftermath of the Kaikoura earthquake. In Christchurch, the 24 Hour Surgery is also there to support General Practices after hours, during busy times of the year, and when they need to close for public holidays or unforeseen circumstances.
Twenty-five years of providing mutual support, whilst cementing the position of organised general practice as a core and key component of our health system, through good times and bad, certainly deserves a hearty celebration. Because of the immense amount of work required to shift the 24 Hour Surgery this year, it has been decided that the publication of our history and an event to mark this milestone will take place in the New Year.
On behalf of the board, I offer a heartfelt thank you to all Pegasus General Practices, leadership and teams at Pegasus central, and to the many others who worked as partners with us to make this last year such a success. Have a good break over the festive season and the summer, 2018 will I am sure provide both further opportunities and challenges.