Mahitahi Hauora’s virtual clinical hub, the Northland Community Health Team (NCHT), is trialling an innovative initiative to free up time for overstretched GPs.

The team is supporting two Far North general practices – Te Hiku Hauora and Hauora Hokianga – with remote nursing and clinical support.

For Te Hiku Hauora clinics in Kaitaia and Cooper’s Beach, the NCHT is providing Medtech inbox management for three GPs, as well as patient recalls for cervical smears and immunisations.

Mahitahi Hauora NCHT Lead Nurse Sue McGiven said these services, provided seven days a week, enable GPs to devote more time to direct patient care by lightening the load of administrative work.

“We relieve the doctors of the burden of having to read through everything and do routine administrative tasks,” she said. “For example, when things like lab or x-ray results, discharge summaries, and specialist reports come in, we review them, provide chart notes, and flag anything that needs urgent attention. We also assign routine tasks, such as patients who need appointments, follow-ups, or recalls straight to the practice nurse.”

Sue has been working closely with Te Hiku GP Dr Kathy Bakke and practice nurse Alison Bowman for almost three weeks.

Since then, Dr Bakke has seen her administrative workload shrink dramatically.

“I’m excited and just grateful. It’s made my life so much better,” she says. “In the last two weeks I’ve only spent three hours outside my regular schedule on paperwork. In the two weeks before that I spent nine extra hours on paperwork, but that was distorted by two days off for CME. Before that, I spent 24 hours extra in a two-week period doing paperwork, and that’s how it was for a long time. So we’re talking huge,” she says.

Practice nurse Alison Bowman has noticed benefits for patients, too. She says the support from NCHT has resulted in more timely pick up of blood test and procedure results; more time to focus on patient clinics and patients managing long-term conditions; quicker follow-up on urgent results; and a “pressure valve released” thanks to not having to race against time to action necessary patient results.

“Since Sue’s involvement I’ve seen a marked change in the timeliness of patient care and follow-ups. My desire is that we continue with this approach, working collaboratively for our patients’ sake.”

In addition, the doctors at the NCHT are trialling virtual consulting support for Hauora Hokianga. They hope to test whether flexible provision of virtual consulting can help when practices are overstretched due to workforce or other issues.

The NCHT developed out of Mahitahi Hauora’s successful Covid-19 Community Clinical Hub, which launched in February 2022 to provide support and leadership for general practices managing Covid-19 patients. Since the beginning of the Omicron surge, the Clinical Hub has provided vital overflow capacity and weekend cover for overstretched practices, as well as caring for unenrolled patients.

Mahitahi Hauora Network Support Manager Cristina Ross says the clinical hub model worked well for the community to manage Covid-19 and is now pivoting to address the current needs and demands of the population.

She said the team is using improvement science methodology to test and refine their services.

“We’re very grateful to the teams at Te Hiku Hauora and Hauora Hokianga for giving us the opportunity to test how these services will work best and how we can best support practices going forward.”

Initially, the NCHT will prioritise support for the highest needs populations and practices under exceptional pressure, but Cristina believes the virtual hub model has potential to grow.

“We’re working to expand the range of support available and to extend our offer of support to other practices and providers,” she said. “We hope that scaling up virtual support for overstretched practices will help to decompress a system under significant pressure.”