Cathy O’Malley: Organised primary care in New Zealand

As GPs and other clinicians prepare to come together into clinical commissioning groups, policy-makers are increasingly interested in understanding what will help enable effective collaboration and strong commissioning, as well as in new ideas for services, from a primary care perspective.

In New Zealand, there are potential lessons to be learned from the independent practitioner associations (IPAs). These were formed in the early 1990s by groups of independent GPs who came together into GP-owned organisations to compete for contracts, hold budgets and improve the quality of primary care.

In this video, Cathy O’Malley, Chief Executive Officer of Compass Health, speaks to Nuffield Trust Senior Fellow Ruth Thorlby about the benefits and pitfalls of organised primary care based on her organisation’s experience. Cathy presented at the Nuffield Trust event: Unleashing the potential of primary care: lessons from New Zealand’s experience of organised general practice, held in June 2011, which hosted speakers from two primary care organisations in New Zealand.