Primary mental health extended GP consultations

Any practice in Taranaki can refer for this service. 

Practices may claim one urgent appointment OR one non-urgent appointment per patient in a 12 month period.

The function of these appointments is to provide clarity around diagnosis and/or for safety review and/or medication review. 

Priority groups the funding is to support

• Māori/Pacific.
• Low-income whānau.
• Those where the GP believes cost will be a barrier to their ability to safely follow up with the GP.

Alternatives to funded care

• If you are a practice with a HIP, please try to make use of this funded service for your patients to reduce the reliance on GP extended consults.
• For patients outside of the above priority groups, please consider other options available to these patients (such as  EAP, online resources, self-funding).

Patients aged 12 years and over living in the Te Whatu Ora Taranaki area and enrolled with the Pinnacle practice where they are having the extended consult.  

Patients who are not enrolled with the Pinnacle practice providing the extended consult.

For each eligible patient, a practice can claim a maximum of one extended consult in a 12-month period. 

Practices are required to provide sufficiently detailed consultation notes to determine appropriate use of funding.  

It has been recommended that in addition to a good assessment and history, the full range of appropriate observations should be documented. It is important to state the time of consultations and interactions with the patient.  

Non-urgent appointment: no patient co-payment to be charged. 

For an urgent assessment only: where an appointment takes longer than 30 minutes, the practice can charge a patient co-payment if they deem it appropriate. 

The service is funded by Te Whatu Ora.