Abstract:
Executive Summary Aims. The National Primary Medical Care Survey was undertaken to describe primary health care in New Zealand, including the characteristics of providers and their practices, the patients they see, the problems presented and the management offered. The study covered private general practices (i.e. family doctors), community-governed organisations, and Accident and Medical (A&M) clinics and Emergency Departments. It was intended to compare data across practice types as well as over time. Subsidiary aims included gathering information on the activities of nurses in primary health care, trialling an electronic data collection tool and developing coding software. This report describes the characteristics of practitioners, patients and patient visits for general practices located in rural areas – defined as those practices with a rural ranking score equal to or greater than 35. This is the criterion for eligibility for Ministry of Health rural health benefits. The characteristics of these practices are compared to those of all others, called “non-rural” in this report. Other reports in the series describe private family doctors, Māori doctors, and after-hours activities and other types of practice, and will analyse differences in practice content that have occurred over time or that exist between practice settings.
