A 'breath of new life' for healthcare in Murihiku

Hokonui Runanga executive coordinator Terry Nicholas, left, and WellSouth chief executive officer Andrew Swanson-Dobbs say the new Te Hau o Te Ora Partnered Primary Care Network will increase access to primary care for Invercargill's unenrolled patients.

An agreement has been signed, a name has been gifted, employment negotiations are underway, and Invercargill may get its much-needed new iwi-led general practice by the end of the year.

Te Hau o Te Ora (The Breath of New Life) is a 50/50 partnership between Awarua Rūnaka, Hokonui Runanga and the WellSouth primary health network and will offer a Mōari model of primary care – a dream held by some kaumātua since the 90s.

This means the service will look at their patients, their homes and their whānau to achieve wellbeing, rather than treating the symptoms they present with.

It will start by bring new GPs online at the WellSouth offices in Clyde St, to bring relief to a city where no practices have capacity to take on new patients.

Land has already been identified to build a six-story health centre where Southlanders will be able to access everything from physiotherapy and x-rays, to a day surgery.

Service manager Anna Gaitt said primary healthcare was about more than just clinical needs.

“They say it takes a village, and that’s how Māori see health. It takes a village to be well.”

“If we can do primary health better, we can relieve strain on the hospital,” Gaitt said.

Hokonui Runanga executive coordinator Terry Nicholas says the new health centre signals a transformative shift. "This has potential to make a genuine difference to health outcomes in the city," he says.

Awarua Whānau Services chief executive Mata Cherrington said the agreement was a start, but the relationships forged in the process of setting up the health centre would be the key to its success.

WellSouth chief executive officer Andrew Swanson-Dobbs said when he heard the ladies in the call centre tell people there was nowhere in Invercargill for them to be enrolled, he felt he had failed in his job to support general practices.

“If there’s in region in the Southern district where there’s a challenge to get access to a GP, it's Invercargill.”

Finding staff was difficult, but he also knew they needed to do something quite different, he said.

Next steps for the project would be securing staff, for which negations were already underway.

Opening the practice would depend on when the doctors could start, he said.

Article written by Louisa Steyl. Published in Stuff October 7 2021.