Election 2017 - Party Policies - Health - Primary Care
27th May 17, 9:39am
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Primary Care
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Not yet available on their website.
- Improve community-based care by providing adequate funding that recognises the full operational and capital costs involved, promotes national consistency, integration and collaboration between agencies, and enables community-based governance structures, as intended by the Primary Health Care Strategy.
- Reduce the need for expensive surgery, hospital care, diagnostic procedures and pharmaceuticals through prevention and early intervention, as intended by the Primary Health Care Strategy.
- Review the funding formula for primary care to address the specific situation of practices looking after very high proportions of high needs populations.
- Support well-trained community health workers, parent support workers and other carers to engage with specific population groups and communities. These workers need appropriate pay, support, respite and supervision.
- Reduce distorted demand for prescription pharmaceuticals by prohibiting directto-public marketing by drug companies.
- Read more here.
- Labour will lower the cost of GP visits by $10.
- Lowering the VLCA (Very Low Cost Access) fee cap by $10 to $8 for adults and $2 for teens (under 13s are already free), with a funding increase to VLCA practices to cover this.
- Increasing government funding for all practices that lower their fees by $10, lowering the average non-VLCA fee from $42 to $32 and the maximum fee from $69 to $59
- Increasing funding for GP training places, taking the intake to 300 per year
- Carrying out a review of primary care funding to further reduce barriers to primary care and ensure the financial sustainability of practices.
- Read more here.
- Free GP visits and prescriptions for under 13s.
- Make it easier for 600,000 low-income New Zealanders to visit their GP before a condition deteriorates by offering Community Services Card holders cheap GP visits capped at $18.
- Read more here.
- Review funding of Primary Health Organisations.
- Develop a national rural and provincial health services plan.
- Review the number of District Health Boards (DHBs) and establish a ratio of practitioners to administrators to keep the focus on health not bureaucracy.
- Support the investigation of a third Medical School at Waikato University and increase the number of medical professionals choosing to be General Practitioners, especially in rural areas.
- Read more here.
Not yet available on their website.
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