“We rolled a 6 to start, now we have to keep the game moving – a good game’s a fast game!” Mark Eager, Chair of the National PRIME Committee
In an interactive and challenging workshop, 60 rural health enthusiasts joined Health NZ – Te Whatu Ora kick-started the redesign of urgent, emergency and unscheduled care services in rural areas with PRIME front and centre of the discussions.
The day started with Dr Bryan MacLeod, Coromandel Family Health Centre, talking about the early days of PRIME on the East Coast and its fit with rural general practice.
Te Whatu Ora’s Rachel Pearce, the co-director of Rural Health, and Martin Hefford, Director Living Well, presented their rural health workplan and talked about the redesign project.
Karen Robertson and Mark Bailey from ACC presented the work that they are doing in the PRIME and rural general practice space.
Mayor of Hurunui, Marie Black talked about the way their District Council supports the rural health services and their teams, across their region. She spoke of the importance of emergency response services to a geographically dispersed rural population, not only as a local authority representative but as a family who has been reliant on them to help when things go awry.
In the afternoon session, participants got together in groups to work through ‘on the ground PRIME call out scenarios’. This gave some appreciation of the range of issues that are involved in the reimagining of primary and urgent care services. Workshop discussions will contribute to the Terms of Reference that will be available towards the end of April.
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