By Hayley Redpath

Shorter visits and fewer assessors are being trialled as part of new look reaccreditation process, announced Pinnacle staff at the launch of Quality Plan 13 last Monday.

Around 25 nurses, general practitioners and administration staff attended the launch by Pinnacle Group Ltd Quality Manager Hayley Lord and Pinnacle Incorporated Board member and General Practitioner Brendon Eade.

Every year Pinnacle release a Quality Plan ensuring general practices have a work plan for maintaining high quality primary health care services. Earlier, Pinnacle indicated that Quality Plan 13 would be leaner than in previous years.

Practice nurses and doctors spoken to by The PHOnetic after the launch, agreed in general that it was.

“It looks definitely easier than last year but there is still a lot of work to do,” said Village Clinic Practice Manager and nurse Jo Rogers.

Staff spoken to particularly also welcomed a change to the reaccreditation process, or Cycle 2 Accreditation, as it is now called. 

The change is as a result of a pilot project between Pinnacle and the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners around the Aiming for Excellence standard.

A sample of practices across the Midland network will be randomly selected each year to receive an assessment from the College. The assessments will be a mixture of full and half-day assessments.

Dr Brendon Eade said it was about reducing the burden for general practice staff.  “Instead of having a full day practice assessment with two independent assessors every three years, practices could be looking at having a half day assessment with one assessor every six years.”

“It’s good news,” said City Medical Centre GP Stu Hockey, who has in the past been vocal in his frustration at some of the reporting requirements from Pinnacle, the College, and other external organisations.

“It was so burdensome when we originally did Cornerstone”

Stu was pleased to see the Quality Plan was now aligning more with the PHO Performance Programme indicators resulting in fewer information collection double-ups.

“It felt like ticking boxes. What I like; is that where we are asked to do something or provide information we are given the tools to do it and the results are useful.”

He and fellow GP Dr Murray Smith were less pleased with a new section in the Quality Plan looking at general practice succession and financial planning. Stu said the subject was “topical” but he remained less than convinced that “filling in a form” was going to help provide answers.

Murray said as a business owner he was already looking at the themes of succession and financial planning and the process didn’t need repeating via the Quality Plan.

Village Clinic practice nurse Jo Rogers and Jennie Falloon said Quality Plan 13 looked better than last year. Jo was pleased that reporting was no longer needed for childhood immunisations, influenza vaccinations, Diabetes Annual Reviews and cardiovascular risk assessments. The data will instead be extracted from the routine Clinical Events Export.

In another new development practices will now receive quarterly reports on their progress towards performance targets. It is welcome news for staff. Earlier in the evening City Medical Centre practice nurse Angela Perrett raised a point that many in general practice did not know what progress they were making on reaching targets, until the end of the financial year.

Subsequently, many in the audience were surprised to learn via Turanganui PHO CEO Keriana Brooking that Turanganui PHO general practices were some of the best in the country for achievement rates in cvd risk assessments.

(The PHOnetic will look at this subject in further detail next week).

By Helen Peterson

Promoting healthy living messages via the Turanga Health Rising Suns Basketball team has come to an end after more than five years.

Basketball New Zealand has decided not to sanction the zone two competition resulting in the Rising Suns having no league to compete in.

Turanga Health chief executive officer Reweti Ropiha said the decision was a sad one and effectively ends more than five years of Turanga Health and the Rising Suns working together to promote healthy living messages.

“There is nothing quite like live sport to get maximum coverage for such promotions, and the basketball games were always well supported locally. We have a lot of basketball fans living here.”

Many of the basketballers would visit local kohanga reo, primary and intermediate schools to help spread the positive messages.  These visits provided valuable opportunities to  teach youngsters about healthy living options.

As well as promoting the benefits of not smoking, the basketballers also encouraged people from all walks of life to have a go at a sport with active participation a main focus, said Reweti. 

Turanga health, which focuses on building family wellness for future generations, offers holistic care for the three iwi of this area: Ngai Tamanuhiri, Rongowhakaata and Te-Aitanga-a-Mahaki.

The programmes offered are vast and include smoking cessation, mental health, community injury prevention, asthma, men’s health, well child services, oral health and prevention of drug and alcohol abuse.

“Many of this district’s tamariki have gained a lot from Turanga Health’s promotions which have also been well supported by kaumatua,” says Reweti.

Rising Suns coach and former player is Turanga Health's Population Health Manager Dwayne Tamatea thereby cementing the relationship between the team and Turanga Health.

However, he said his organisation also used kapa haka competitions, waka ama, touch rugby, rugby, netball and hockey to promote healthy living messages.

“We have enjoyed great mileage from the Rising Suns games so at present we are retrenching and considering our options for next year.”