The 2005/06 year was a period of consolidation and delivery on the previous year’s planning for Partnership Health Canterbury. It has been rewarding to see programmes and ideas being implemented and the subsequent benefits to individuals and communities being realised.

Since our establishment in 2004, the amount of funding we receive has doubled. The cost of seeing a general practitioner has decreased for people under 25 and over 65, with those aged between 45 and 64 years benefiting from 1 July 2006. In the next 12 months, subsidies will also be available for those aged between 25 and 44 meaning every person enrolled in a PHO will have access to reduced general practice and prescription charges. General practices are able to deliver new services and the linkages between various primary health care providers and community organisations are improving. Piece by piece we are seeing the jigsaw puzzle of health, education and social support services coming together.

In this Annual Report, we have detailed a number of the activities that we have been part of or have supported in the last 12 months. Anchoring our activity is the commitment of the general practice teams to their enrolled populations. There have been a million general practitioner consultations and almost 75 percent of our enrolled population have seen their general practitioner this year. In addition, the practice nurses have continued to extend and expand their roles and provided care and support for people in the practice and in the community. As yet, we do not have the systems in place to capture the extent of the practice nurse delivery of service but the outcomes we describe in this document are hugely dependent on their work.

We are fortunate to be able to work with so many organisations and community groups in addressing the broader health determinants. A list of the organisations we have contracts with are included in this report, however, this is a subset of the organisations and people we have interacted with who have contributed to our work. As we acknowledged last year our success has been predicated on being able to build upon the experience, work and capacity of our seven associated Independent Practitioner Associations and Primary Care Organisations. These organisations are Pegasus Health (Charitable), Papanui Medical Centre, Christchurch South Health Centre, Selwyn Rural Healthcare, Pacific Trust Canterbury and Lincoln University. We continue to rely on Pegasus Health to provide much of the management and project support.

We also value the support of and engagement with the Canterbury District Health Board’s Planning and Funding Team and the interaction with our fellow PHOs. In Canterbury, the CDHB supports the five PHOs to work together in a collaborative way. We jointly plan and provide services to ensure that the whole population of the CDHB region gets fair access to a range of primary care-based services and most importantly so we don’t waste resources “reinventing the wheel”.

In 2006/07, our challenges focus around supporting people with chronic on-going illness and working with the hospital to reduce the need for acute medical admissions and to improve the management of elective services. If we are more successful with the former, we hope we will have a significant impact on the latter two. We will continue to focus on our health promotion and disease prevention activity. We have also added some new activities around building the work force required to deliver key services.

It’s important we all realise that no country in the world has the resources needed to deliver all the health services that modern medicine makes possible. It is therefore vital, that we take responsibility for keeping ourselves well and lessening the burden on the public health system. The introduction of PHOs and the engagement of communities in managing their own health needs are steps in this direction.

Thank you to our Board of Trustees for their dedicated and valuable work.

Michael McEvedy and Carolyn Gullery