The New Facilities
The New Kauri HealthCare
At Kauri HealthCare we have built far more than a new health care facility. While treating immediate health concerns our focus at Kauri HealthCare is on facilitating a lifetime of well-being for you and your family. The dynamic relationships between our GPs, nurses, other health providers and supporters within our immediate team as well as secondary community carers ensures you have the best resources to support your life long health journey.
The Background
Kauri HealthCare has evolved from discussions between three established general practices: - Albert Street, Amesbury St and Vivian Street Medical Centres.
Each practice has worked successfully for years, but we recognised the need for change and new initiatives.
Palmerston North has had a small number of GPs for its population, and our GPs are ageing, many approaching retirement. The challenge for the area’s health planners and GPs has been to attract the next generation of primary health care providers, and to deliver care that is more connected, more integrated, and more seamless between general practice, community and hospital care. This care would be provided from ‘Integrated Family Health Centres’, providing a wider range of health services closer to the communities they serve.
Recognising this, we wanted to join with like-minded practitioners who held the same values and core beliefs about the health care we wished to deliver and develop for the future.
Alongside new ways of delivering health care, we wanted to keep the elements of our practices that we enjoy and we believe our patients value.
So we had to think differently and asked questions like ‘how could we preserve our small practice feel, where we know our patients and our patients know us?’ How could we maintain a high standard of health care and leave a legacy that we were proud of, in a new health environment and in a new, large building?
We decided that we would have, within the larger IFHC building, small ‘pods’ – areas where each patient will have a relationship with their health provider as part of the small team of staff who work in that pod. These pod teams now include Health Care assistants, Clinical Nurse Specialists and Nurse Practitioners.
Because the three practices have combined, we now have on site a wider range of skills, so when they need it, our patients will have access to skills and services across the pods, while still retaining that ‘special’ relationship with their own pod team.
This means that more health care can be provided at Kauri HealthCare, and this will include other providers from the Hospital and community whom we will welcome to work with us in our facility, to make healthcare more accessible, more convenient more timely.
