It's been one month since the $5 prescription co-payment was removed. To ensure awareness of this change, Te Whatu Ora has created a fact sheet and poster with clear information about the co-payment removal. Please feel free to display them in your practices or visible areas for patients.

From 14 August, in an effort to improve outcomes, when a patient is referred for hip and or knee arthroplasty/osteoarthritis, their first specialist appointment may be with a physiotherapist at Waikato Hospital. The physiotherapist will assess the patient and determine the best treatment pathway for them.  

In order to keep patient and practice data secure from cyber-attacks, ProCare is adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) to the login process for the Profusion Standalone website, Tableau and the MRI Providers Portal. As of Monday 31 July, practices using these sites will have the option to set up MFA when logging in.

A randomised controlled trial, of caffeine prophylaxis to improve neurodevelopment in babies born late preterm, is about to get underway in the Te Whatu Ora Taranaki Neonatal Unit for the next 18 months. General practices may get questions from patients who are part of this trial.

World Hepatitis Day is on Friday 28 July. This is a good opportunity to remind practice staff to consider a simple blood test to screen for Hep C exposure, check you have offered treatment to all your patients with known Hepatitis C and Refer to HealthPathways for details, and contact the Te Manawa Taki Community Hep C Team if you would like support finding or managing your Hep C patients.

The stop smoking service contract in Tairāwhiti now sits with Turanga Health Smoking Cessation Service rather than Once and For All. Referrals can be sent to Turanga Health Smoking Cessation Service via email or phone.

Healthcare workers (clinical and non clinical) are invited to participate in a survey on the challenges they face when enrolling and engaging whānau and their pēpi in primary care. Study findings will help inform a targeted strategy to achieve better immunisation rates for pēpi through better connection with primary care.

Hospice Waikato has released a series of training dates to provide advanced care planning (ACP) and serious illness conversation workshops. These workshops will be facilitated at Hospice Waikato. Some pre-course Ko-Awatea and/or ACP eLearning is prerequisite prior to attending these workshops.