GP practice joining SCPC network to lift patient care

One of Hawke's Bay's largest GP practices is about to join the Southern Cross Primary Care (SCPC) network as a foundation partner.

Taradale Medical Centre hopes to free up its resources to provide better patient care and carry out more minor surgery.

The centre has nine GPs and 11,000 enrolled patients, and incorporates an Accident & Medical (A&M;) clinic.

Its shareholding GPs include Mark Peterson, deputy chairman of the New Zealand Medical Association and former chairman of the GP Leaders Forum.

Dr Peterson said being involved in the SCPC network would help support and expand some of the skills GPs were already trained for, enabling them to carry out minor surgery and other procedures, while leaving less involved skills to others involved in the health sector.

"We have the skills but not the funding network," he said. There would be added benefits to patients with Southern Cross medical insurance, because claims for GP visits could be made directly, depending on the amount of medical cover covered on their policy.

The practice will join Silverdale Medical, Taranaki's CareFirst and Queenstown Medical Centre in the SCPC network, doubling the network's size to around 40,000 enrolled patients and 40 GPs.

SCPC chief executive officer Victor Klap said those practices distinguished themselves not only because they delivered a broad range of services, but because they wanted to drive a further broadening of the scope of care provided in general practice to their local communities.

"These are progressive GPs with exciting ideas about new revenue streams and system efficiencies that will benefit patients.

"Those ideas will define our development priorities for the network over coming months."

SCPC's approach is to take a 20 per cent interest in a partnership set up to run the local GP business, with the other 80 per cent existing local GP owners.

Southern Cross Primary Care was established last year, within the not-for-profit Southern Cross Healthcare Group to partner with progressive general practices to create a national general practice network. It is operationally independent from the other Southern Cross Health Society business units.