BayBuzz has been informed that various disgruntled General Practices (the doctors you most often visit) plan to leave Hawke’s Bay’s umbrella Public Health Organization – Health Hawke’s Bay.

PHOs are the entities (registered charities) that channel Health NZ’s per capita government funding to the individual General Practices and generally oversee primary care in their regions. There are currently about 30 PHOs across NZ.

Health HB’s website currently lists 24 providers across the region with an enrolled population of over 171,000 patients.

However, the GPs have the option to participate in other PHOs, and in 2025 74 practices changed PHOs.

Three such new entities were approved last year by Health NZ – Green Cross (to become Community Care Ltd with 54 practices initially), Tend Health (Arataki PHO, with 14 practices and over 87,000 enrolled patients in Auckland, BoP and Canterbury), and most recently ‘thePHO’ being established by the General Practice Owners Assn (GenPro). 

GenPro says that 116 practices are keen to switch, with more than 800,000 enrolled patients, and trade media indicate fully 150 practices have given ‘exit notices’ that they will change PHOs from July 2026. Health NZ now says 97 practices have given notice they will move to GenPro’s ‘thePHO’.

Providers making or contemplating switches generally complain that their current PHOs are not passing through to the general practices the full funding they should be provided for their frontline services. So they are looking for better funding arrangements and less administrative overhead and complexity.

The PHOs respond that as registered charities they are fully transparent, with 100% of per capita payments indeed passing through to the GPs, adding that other services and support for overall population health are provided directly by the PHOs, via ‘flexible funding’, such as such as diabetes, youth health, mental health, sexual health, immunisation, and marae clinics.

So part of the argument is over who is best positioned to provide these services, as many general practices also do, and be correspondingly compensated from the PHOs’ ‘flexible funding’ pool. Potentially shifting practices are seeking greater clarity and certainty about ‘flexible funding’.

And all this shifting of PHOs and loyalties is occurring while the sector awaits a formal PHO Strategy from Health NZ expected by the end of March.

BayBuzz approached Health HB about our regional situation.

Citing “commercial sensitivity”, they responded vaguely: “Although we have had some Hawke’s Bay general practices indicate they may be leaving us, we will continue to work with local General Practices to better meet their needs and ensure we are able to retain a locally led PHO.”

BayBuzz will be interviewing Health HB Chairman Kevin Snee on the matter shortly.

Stay tuned.