General practice workforce and cost survey

Practice managers are encouraged to participate in the General Practice Workforce and Cost Survey, currently being conducted by Sapere on behalf of Te Whatu Ora. Your input will help develop a capitation formula that better aligns with actual needs. 

The survey will close at midnight on 10 July 2024. It requests information on:

• enrolment
• after-hours
• workforce headcount and FTE
• co-located staff not employed by the practice (such as HIP, physiotherapist)
• financials (such as average GP salary per FTE, recruitment costs, operating costs). 

Taking the time to fill in this straightforward survey will lead to a capitation formula better inline with need. The existing capitation model often fails to account for the inherent disparities faced by different populations, which results in inefficiencies and inequities in funding paid to practices. 

Additional information

Sapere has provided the following details about why it is undertaking the survey.

Sapere will use the survey results to validate its analysis to ensure they have a comprehensive understanding of the operating conditions of general practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Te Whatu Ora commissioned Sapere to develop an improved capitation model that enhances the efficiency and fairness of funding allocation to general practice. They have received data for 2023 from practice management systems across Aotearoa New Zealand that they will use to enhance the model developed for the 2022 Future Capitation Funding Approach. The data is being used to revise the capitation population cohorts, and then how the cohorts should be weighted, by analysing how much time clinicians spend with patients from different population groups. 

Because practice management systems do not capture all the time clinicians spend on patients, particularly non-contact time, they will use the survey results to scale up the time spent with patients. This will ensure the analysis more accurately reflects the total time commitment of clinicians, encompassing both direct patient interactions and associated tasks. 

Sapere are collecting information on costs so they can validate and compare them to observations they have made when visiting practices across Aotearoa New Zealand. 

The details collected will be kept confidential and will not be shared outside of Sapere. Where information is used in their report it will be aggregated or averaged ensuring individual practice data is not identified. Sapere is committed to maintaining confidentiality and preventing disclosure of sensitive information. 

To reinforce their commitment, Sapere will implement the following measures.

1. Restricted access: only Sapere personnel who are directly involved in the project will be able to access the raw data.
2. Secure data storage: Sapere adheres to industry adopted best practices for security and maintains a high level of confidentiality and data integrity across all systems. They use secure folders with multi-factor authentication to ensure the safe storage of the data provided to them. If required, Sapere will delete raw data from their case file at an agreed period after the conclusion of the project. Off-site backups are held for two years after which the data is purged.
3. Restricted data use: Sapere will not use the data for any purpose other than the capitation modelling without express permission.
4. Compliance with legal and regulatory standards: their analysis will strictly adhere to relevant laws and regulations, particularly the Health Information Privacy Code. Sapere will ensure no identifiable information about people is revealed. No identifiable practice-level information will be available outside of the project team.