Your voice in healthcare
We were privileged to host Health Minister Andrew Little in the O¯ taki electorate for a health reform announcement. It was a good day for both Mana and O¯ taki electorates as Porirua and Levin were announced as some of the first locality planning networks. The Government is supporting nine localities nationwide.
Locality planning networks are an essential feature of the health reforms, which, subject to the legislation passing in Parliament, will take effect on July 1.
Locality networks will be where communities, including iwi, have a say on what health services are provided for them, and how they will be provided.
A locality co-ordinator will draw health providers, iwi, local authority representatives, and social sector agencies to work out what is available and what is needed. The purpose is to engage with the community and understand its needs.
The plan that is developed will be agreed with the relevant iwi Ma¯ ori partnership board and will be tailored to the community covered by the
locality. That plan will form the basis of the funding decisions by Health New Zealand and the Ma¯ ori Health Authority.
The locality structure will be a mechanism for iwi and communities to have a voice in their healthcare. For example, one locality might have a need for more diabetes support — and it will be up to local partnerships to agree on whether dedicated services are needed.
The care and support that is delivered will be joined up across different health and wellbeing providers. For example, someone’s GP, local pharmacist and inhome nurse should be able to work better together to provide the wrap-around care and support that individual and their wha¯ nau need.
And health and wellbeing providers will be connected to other community organisations that have a role in supporting people. This will ensure we can better support all of a family’s needs, across areas like housing, employment and finances alongside healthcare.
To achieve this, networks of providers including health and social care organisations will be set up. There will be different mechanisms that will encourage these providers to work together, such as short and longer-term provider contracts, financial incentives, and data sharing and privacy agreements. Whatever the mechanism, the intention is for care to be comprehensive and holistic.
For rural communities, there has been a long-standing challenge to recruit health workers to them and to have services available as close as possible to people.
Locality planning offers the opportunity for better co-ordination between services now on offer. More importantly, it’s a chance to rethink how services are offered (which could be digitally) or how they are organised (for example, different practitioners might come together to better utilise facilities or try different business models).
Mana and the O¯ taki electorate were chosen because there is already positive progress happening in them.