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Clinic waiting times generally have been brought down to between 24-48 hours for the past month. There have been two Panic® week activations totalling about three days due to multiple public holidays and this has worked very well to keep our waiting times under control.

The first batches of Rybelsus have been shipped and as of today are being inspected by NZ Customs and should be cleared for delivery this coming week. We should be getting the 3 mg sampler stock the following week and Matt can update everyone on the list about the availability when it arrives.

Another option for weight loss is Wegovy, which has just become available this month. It’s active ingredient is identical to Rybelsus and is manufactured by the same company, except that it is about 50% more expensive and given by injection once a week. We plan to continue supplying Rybelsus until it becomes available locally at a competitive price.

Hillview’s two-year anniversary will be on October 1st 2025, and in accordance with our founding commitment, we will increase our charges based on the Stats NZ inflation rate for the previous two years. For 2023 and 2024, which are the latest published figures, the increase will total about 8%. At the same time, our staff pay will be increased by the same amount to account for cost-of-living changes.

The standard consult fees for patients over 18 years will rise from $60 to $67, but there will be a $2 discount for those who book by the website (effectively $65), while the script charges will rise from $25 to $30 with a $5 discount for website booking (effectively unchanged).

CSC consult fees will rise from $19.50 to $20 but there will be no discount for website booking. Script charges for CSC and children will rise from $10 to $15, with a $5 website discount (effectively unchanged).

You can see that for consults and scripts, the main change is the rise for the standard consult, and this amounts to a bit less than 8%. Pushing for website booking is important for us as this increases efficiency and allows our reception team to focus on value-added services for our patients. Scripts are especially important as it is very difficult to accommodate requests for ‘repeat everything’ or medications with similar sounding names which get confused.

We will keep most of the service charges unchanged, but two items will be revised from July 1st 2025. The first would be the driving license / medical license checks which will be a standard non-CSC consult ($65 after website discount) for everyone if done by our nurses. If you book with a doctor for this, the charge will be $100. In other words, ask the nurse to do it. It’s cheaper and they are more lenient once we get them trained.

The second is the introduction of a general documentation fee of $30. This applies to clinical referrals, completion of WINZ / ACC18 certifications, medical certificates outside of a consult, mobility parking, disability certification, etc.

The fee applies per document request and the main reason is that I spend an extra 1-2 hours per day working on these outside clinic hours. Every other clinic including Pip Harpur’s new setup charges a minimum of $30 for this, and some others even have a minimum charge plus a time-based surcharge.

We have been applying for HUHC cards for as many of our patients who qualify (roughly about 100-150 of them). These cards allow a discounted service similar to CSC card holders and apply to patients who have visited their enrolled doctor at least 12 times in the past year.

However, the Ministry of Health has been turning down a lot of these applications based on a technicality, in that they disallow counting of visits to their previously enrolled doctor. Hillview has tried to engage with them, but the Ministry will not even answer a formal enquiry.

We feel that this is unfair and discriminatory and increases costs to our patients. This discount can amount to between $550-1000 per annum for patients. Hillview actually loses about $200-500 per patient that we apply for, given that the increased capitation only partially offsets the loss of revenue.

For the next two weeks we will be putting an option on our website under Services… Petition where our registered patients can sign a petition. If enough patients sign up, we will submit this first to our local MP for support, and afterwards to the Health and Disability Commissioner to push for a formal review.