Paper prepared as an editorial for the British Medical Journal by Laurence Malcolm Professor Emeritus University of Otago Consultant Aotearoa Health January 1997 Summary New Zealand's new coalition government has formally rejected key elements of its predecessors health reform policies. Key lessons from the New Zealand experience include the ascendancy of professional incentives over market mechanisms in health care, the potential for collaboration in achieving professional goals and the ability of doctors to be accountable, within a budget, for decisions about priorities in health.
Competition is out and collaboration is in.
The four regional purchasers which contract with providers are to be replaced with a central funding authority. The government now appears to recognise that health is primarily a social service, not a business. The growth of collaboration in primary care. Initial opposition to independent practice associations from the medical profession to this new contracting relationship has been replaced with strong support, especially from general practitioners. They are similar in many respects to the new commissioning bodies proposed in the UK Labour Party's health policy.