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Pip Harpur will be starting out on Monday to Wednesday, 9 am – 4 pm, and two out of four Saturday mornings per month. She will plan to add Thursday to this around mid-year.

I will be stopping my Saturday morning clinic so that I can go to the beach and get a suntan while the weather is still good.

The Children’s Clinic will operate when either of us are in, but finish by 5 pm on weekdays.

Just a reminder to please not use the admin email (admin@hillviewmedical.co.nz) as no one checks the account and emails are auto deleted after a while. Also avoid using the doctor’s email for anything urgent (seng.loke@hillviewmedical.co.nz) as one of our staff will be checking this once a week and transferring onto the doctor’s task box.

Messages through our website are dealt with fastest as they appear directly in my task box. Emails to reception are usually processed daily.

From 1st April 2025, we will stop accepting cash payments at the front desk. You can pay using the EFTPOS machine or by online banking. If you really need to use cash, please see our clinic accountant Matt, who will set up a cash account for you.

Over the past year, many of you have expressed an interest in some of the new weight loss medications.

Trulicity was the first one available, but it is fairly weak with an average of 2 kg weight loss. Saxenda / Victoza are somewhat stronger, with about 4-6 kg expected weight loss over 6 months, and cost about $500 per month. The newer drugs like Ozempic have been licensed in NZ but are only available by import for a cost of $5000 per month, but the average weight loss can be up to 15-20 kg.

I am working together with our neighbouring pharmacy to bring in Rybelsus, which is the tablet version of Ozempic under Section 25 of the Medicines Act 1981. However, there are a lot of barriers and Medsafe has replied with a whole bunch of warnings and cautions. I am bringing in a trial batch to work out the logistics and if this is successful, will update you all.

Now that Pip Harpur has joined us, patients will be given the choice to choose their enrolled provider. Patients are expected to see their own doctor except for intercurrent illnesses, accidents, and emergencies.

For the time being, I am suspending new enrolments for myself except for specialty problems like thyroid and diabetes. This is because my waiting time has been creeping up and this will allow me some room to sort my new patients out before I can take in more people. As always, we strive to maintain our standard of having patients seen within 24 hours of booking.

I apologise as the website has been offline quite a bit in the last couple of weeks. There has been some instability caused by recent software updates from Microsoft. This has been sorted out, so things should be fairly stable now.

I am planning to put a small graphic on the front page showing our clinic providers and their average clinic waiting time.

Pip Harpur is joining our team as a Nurse Practitioner. Basically, she functions as a GP and will be enrolling patients. She is caring and experienced and is well-loved by her patients. Pip is very good with her hands and will run our minor surgery clinic once she settles in. This contrasts with Dr Loke who can’t sew a button on his own shirt. We expect Pip to start around the middle of March, and will be operating clinics most days, including Saturday. When she starts, Hillview’s operating hours will extend from 9 am – 8 pm on weekdays, and 9 am – 1 pm on Saturday.

Our website has undergone a major version update. The first version which came out when our clinic started in October 2023 was basic and worked well enough. Over the next few months, it became clear that we required more functionality and one of the most demanded features was compatibility with mobile devices. In June 2024, the second version was rolled out with these features, but there were issues with stability due to problems with some Microsoft software. The biggest issue was that patients had difficulty setting up their accounts due to the cumbersome process we used because of limitations imposed by our clinic software provider.

With this new version, we have tried to work out the bugs present in the older versions, especially around account registration and passwords. While there are many changes under the hood, these should be transparent to users. The main ones which you should know about are:

1) We are abandoning passwords (mostly)

It does not make sense to implement high-end password protection for your website account as most people tend to use a single password for everything, including important stuff like banking. Why put what is important at risk just so you can access your health information? Our preferred method of access is now email verification where every time you want to log-in, an email is sent to you with a verification link. Just click on the email link and it will bring you directly to the website.

You can still use your existing passwords or create new ones if you wish. External verification providers like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft all provide one-click access without having to compromise your passwords, and this is the safest and easiest way to log in if you have these accounts.

2) We are automatically configuring accounts for all enrolled users

All new patients will have website accounts created for them and their families based on the email that is given to us on enrolment. People with the same email will be grouped under a single account. Existing patients whose accounts have not been set up will also have this done for them in the same manner. An email will be sent to patients when an automatic update is planned, and you have about a week to make changes before we implement them. You can send an email to reception@hillviewmedical.co.nz for any changes which you want.

Two services are currently operational, being the Liquid Nitrogen Cryotherapy service on Saturday morning and the Women’s Health service on Monday and Wednesday afternoon. Here you can get your warts and skin lesions frozen off, and cervical smears, Depo-Provera injections, and Mirena IUDs inserted and removed.

We expect that with the new GPs coming in the second quarter of 2025, new services such as the Minor Surgery and Acupuncture clinics will start up, depending on patient demand.