COVID-19 IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR ALL PATIENTS

March 22nd, 2020

From Monday 23rd March 2020, all general practice surgeries have been instructed to screen people entering their facilities and therefore apply a ‘closed door’ policy. We will be providing consultations by phone, email or video.

Your doctor will contact you via one of these methods. If they feel it is necessary to see you face to face they will organise this with you.

If you have a pre-booked appointment, your doctor or nurse will contact you via one of these methods. If they feel it is necessary to see you face-to-face they will organise this with you.

If you need to book an appointment, you must contact us by telephone or Manage My Health first.

If you have been advised by the government to self isolate (eg you are 70 years of age of older or immunocompromised) and need medical assistance, please contact us by telephone or Manage My Health so we can help you. We have local pharmacies who can assist with home delivery of medication.

To free up capacity in our services, we encourage you to consider postponing your routine appointments this week.

We will not be making face-to-face booking for the following non-urgent appointments:

  • Routine nurse appointments e.g. smears/wart treatment/ear syringes/ Blood pressure checks
  • Scripts will be faxed to your pharmacy to reduce person to person contact so you will need to let us know your normal pharmacy
  • WINZ and ACC extensions and off work notes LTC appointments e.g. diabetes

Please do not stockpile medications. It is critical for us to maintain access to medicines across our community.

We will provide further updates on flu vaccination clinics and you can be reassured that patients at highest risk of complications from influenza will be prioritised as a matter of urgency.

We are taking these measures to try and reduce the spread of COVID-19, to protect everyone in the community and to be able to continue caring for those most vulnerable.

To see more information about this, see the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners article here.