Leading healthcare provider, ProCare, has launched a ‘Winter Wellness’ campaign to support hardworking general practices across the Northern Region as they battle the full throes of winter coughs, colds and flu-like illnesses plus the uplift in COVID cases.

Bindi Norwell, Chief Executive at ProCare says: “General practices have been working tirelessly at the moment, so we are rallying around them to provide support in any way we can. The ‘Winter Wellness’ campaign is really embodying the phrase ‘many hands make light work’ as we utilise both clinical and non-clinical resources to ease the burden.”

Appreciative of the support is Celine Patrick, Practice Manager at Mt Smart Medical Centre: “Having extra support to help us continue with immunisations, CVD [Cardiovascular Disease] checks and smears has been a huge relief. It means we can continue to deliver care for our patients when they need it most.

“We’ve also utilised the telehealth services, UnifyHealth and CareHQ, to give our patients more options to see a doctor, particularly when we have limited availability,” continues Celine.

Gabrielle Lord, General Manager of Practice Services, says: “We saw how successful and appreciated ‘Mission Possible’ was during the height of the Omicron outbreak at the beginning of the year, so we are taking the achievements and learnings from that and applying it to our ‘Winter Wellness’ campaign.

“The added pressure of winter colds and flu alongside the COVID outbreak has really made it tough for General Practices. We’ve pooled our resources to provide support such as temporary admin services, triaging patients wanting to come into practices, completing CVDRA’s to help practices meet targets, and carrying out immunisations and overdue high-grade smear recalls,” says Lord.

Other areas of support include helping practices with administrative essentials such as fee reviews, helping with Business Continuity Plans and data input.