July marks the sixth anniversary of Primary Health Organisations in New Zealand, and over four million New Zealanders are benefiting.

Latest Ministry of Health figures show that at the end of 2007 there were 11.1 million subsidised General Practitioner appointments in New Zealand.

“That’s a phenomenal number of people accessing much needed health services,” Minister of Health David Cunliffe said.

Mr Cunliffe said Primary Health Organisations were established to provide comprehensive, affordable health care and that’s what they are doing.

“Our goal was to change the way people used primary health services, we wanted them focus on using services to stay well rather than wait until they were sick.”

“We know the average cost of seeing a GP is now $26 nationwide for a consultation and for a million Kiwi’s they pay no more than $15.50.”

“Low cost affordable access could not have been delivered under the catastrophic experiment of market driven healthcare that characterised the 1990’s”

A recent Ministry of Health survey confirmed just 1.7 percent of people viewed cost as a barrier to accessing GP services.

Last year Pharmac announced that the number of subsidised prescriptions had reached an all time high of nearly 32 million an 11.8 percent increase on the previous year.

“This year’s budget further extended low cost $3 prescriptions to hospital prescriptions.”

Mr Cunliffe said the next steps in the Primary Health Care Strategy are to focus increasingly on preventative health services and management of long-term health conditions.

“We have already come along way, but there is still more that can be done.”