Child Health

we try to be a child-friendly practice but also one where children are expected to show respect for other people and property. If a child wishes to damage property or prevents a consultation from being effective, we may insist they leave the consulting room and be supervised by my staff.

Services include:

• Six week baby check and vaccination of my patients -including when pregnancy care has been delivered by an Independent Midwife. [FREE]

• Routine Vaccinations -Those vaccinations on the Immunisation Schedule are FREE, other vaccinations/immunizations are available such as Hepatitis A, but not funded. You should discuss the place of these with our Practice Nurse.

• Routine Health Checks -Those provided by Plunket are FREE but are not intended to deal with specific medical problems which will need a visit to the Practice Nurse or GP, and will NOT BE FREE.
  The eight Well Child - Tamariki Ora National Schedule checks [*=vaccinations due] are scheduled at 6 weeks*, 3 months*, 5 months, 8-10 months, 15 months*, 21-24 months, 3 years and pre-school*. See The Well Child Tamariki Ora Programme

• Nurse Asthma Check -FREE but the doctor will need to see the child for on-going medication.
• short (5-10min), single problem consultations - the fee here may be lower BUT funding provided for the "Free under-six (or 14)" schemes are only available in PHO practices, so cannot be offerred in this practice other than as a charity. However there is a GMS subsidy so our child fees are reduced by that amount and will become lower when and if a Minister of Health finally understands that 350,000 plus people are not covered by PHOs and so increasing the GMS is an easy and fair way to reduced child GP costs for low income families. BUT it takes people asking their MP to motivate politicians...

• Longer (>15 min), complicated or multiple problem consultations -will attract a HIGHER FEE. see "Fees"

• Medicals for Outward Bound, Boarding School etc -please note: this service cannot be performed in a 10-15 minute standard consultation and may require significant input from the Practice Nurse. It is also vital to bring the documentation/forms etc for the medical with the patient information already filled out (reduces time and so costs).

• Parent Resources -we have available a FREE "library" of very practical New Zealand based books on topics such as training Good Behaviour, achieving good Sleep patterns and Toilet Training. We have a supply of "Wet Stop" alarms for bed wetting (we lend the alarm but charge for the consumable bits). Talk to the Practice Nurse about other needs.