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. 

Prices are GST inclusive.  

Extended GP consultations 

Non-urgent appointment: $75.00 

For an appointment likely to take longer than 30 minutes.  

No patient co-payment can be charged. 

Urgent assessment: $75.00 

Where the patient is presenting acutely in a distressed or mentally unwell state and they require immediate assessment to see whether they can be managed in primary care or need acute secondary referral. 

For an appointment likely to take longer than 30 minutes.  

The practice can charge a patient co-payment if they deem it appropriate. 

These consultations are expected to happen rarely, and consultation notes need to reflect the level of distress at presentation and why immediate assessment was necessary.   

indici practices 

Select the Primary Mental Health Service from the funded services to the right of your patient palette. 

MedTech practices  

Please complete a MedTech Advanced Form (Primary Mental Health – GP)  

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.