The Clinical Informatics Award is back in its sixth year, promoting the value that clinicians bring to whānau and community in providing data and digitally enabled care. The 2024 award is open to anyone with a clinical background and an interest in clinical informatics: this can be an individual or a clinical team, so get nominating today!

Read the latest clinical updates for Taranaki including urgent joint aspirations, a new national orthopaedic service pathway and more.

Until the end of September, two evidence-based medicine tools are available to all practices through the resources on the frontpage of Community Healthpathways: Dynamed and BMJ Best Practice.

Te Whatu Ora wants your opinion on which best serves your needs by filling in a brief survey. This is an important decision and a high response rate will be very helpful as they decide whether they can acquire one of the resources (subject to the very real fiscal constraints).

Funding of continuous glucose monitoring and automated insulin delivery begins on 1 October. Not all people living with T1D are known to the Taranaki Diabetes Integrated Team. To re-engage these whānau with the funded technology, the Pinnacle clinical diabetes specialist is available to run a query build in your practice and contact these patients to discuss changes in funding and available services for the initiation of insulin pump therapy / AID.

Funding of continuous glucose monitoring and automated insulin delivery begins on 1 October. The Waikato Regional Diabetes Service will take the lead in supporting whānau with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) with this change. Not all people living with T1D are known to the regional diabetes service. In order to re-engage these whānau with the funded technology, please do a query build of your patients with T1D so they can be informed of the localities of drop in clinics and CGM start education.

Te Whatu Ora acknowledge primary care efforts to immunise your practice population in the face of significant workforce challenges and community resistance and mistrust post-covid. Read the latest immunisation in general practice update (30 August) here.

Te Whatu Ora has received notice of further industrial action by members of the APEX union. This means that MRI and Nuclear Medicine Technologists will be undertaking further work to rule action, from 6am, Thursday 12 September to 6am, Saturday 21 September.

There is a New Zealand-wide shortage of extended-release methylphenidate, both Concerta and Methylphenidate ER - Teva brands.

Ka Hono is a collegial support service facilitated by the Bay of Plenty / Waikato faculty of RNZCGP. It is open to all GPs (including non-faculty members) and all GP registrars in the GPEP program (years 1-3).

Small group clinical education for primary care clinicians on topics that are engaging, relevant and strategically important to the Aotearoa NZ health system. The programme runs exclusively online via Zoom and covers 5 topics across a 12-month period. Upcoming topics include frailty and legacy prescribing, menopause and chronic kidney disease.