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More Care for Canterbury Patients at Home
Source: The Press

More patients will be looked after in their own homes rather than in hospital under an $8.8 million deal between the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) and community health providers. The three-year CDHB agreement is the first major collaboration of its kind with the common goal of putting patient care back into the community. The arrangement took effect on October 1 and will be rolled out in coming months.

CDHB planning and funding manager Carolyn Gullery said it was the first time the district health board had "pulled together such a broad collaboration". "We see this as providing people with the right care in the right place," she said. Through the Community Care Programme, patients who normally may go to hospital will be channelled through a call-centre operated by St John. Healthcare workers there, in consultation with general practitioners, will assess whether the patient can remain at home or elsewhere in the community, such as a rest home, and be provided with appropriate support.

Christchurch GP group Pegasus Health managing director Paul McCormack said patients would be well served by the new scheme. "It's not about saving money. It's about providing safe alternatives to hospital admission that are acceptable to people and their doctors – it's about creating choices." Pegasus, which represents two-thirds of the doctors in Canterbury, was still in the early stages of promoting and explaining the project to GPs and nurses, he said. He believed the scheme was a first for the country, and could set a precedent for other districts grappling with overcrowded hospitals and ageing populations succumbing to illness. "It's a unique contract in New Zealand and the District Health Board is to be congratulated."

Gullery said DHB officials would be monitoring the effectiveness of the programme to see whether it was alleviating pressure on hospitals and whether patients were benefiting. She was confident patients who ended up in the community and out of hospital would be well cared for. "The key to the service from my perspective is that it enables GPs and patients to work out for themselves what's going to work for that person. It's person-centred – we're not making the person fit the system, we're making the system fit the person – which is one of the reasons it will work really well. It's responsive to the needs of individuals."