The missing piece of the health data puzzle

General practice data is fragmented and difficult to compare

Around 75 per cent of New Zealanders visit a general practice every year. Each visit, and the clinical and administrative activity it involves, is recorded in the practice’s electronic health record or patient management system. This data is critical for providing Primary Health Organisations (PHOs) and health system leaders with a clear picture of what is happening in general practice and where resources could have the greatest impact on population health.

Yet this information has never been brought together into a single national dataset before. Doing so has been difficult for several reasons:

• General practice data sits in separate patient management systems in each practice, with no national repository or infrastructure to integrate it
• Much of it is stored as free text or coded differently between practices and systems.
• National datasets, such as the National Minimum Data Set and the Pharmaceutical Collection, capture hospital activity and prescriptions but are not well linked to general practice data, so they provide only a partial picture of population health and service use.

How the dashboard makes general practice data comparable

The Primary Care Dashboard is a PHO-led initiative, enabled by GPNZ and funded by Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora. It draws on clinical diagnoses, laboratory test results and prescribing data to create the first consolidated, independent national source of population and clinical information from general practice.

To make data from different practices and systems comparable:

• Each indicator has a single, nationally agreed definition. The definitions were developed through clinical, technical and PHO expertise, with indicators mapped to both SNOMED CT and Read codes. This establishes a common basis for identifying the same patient populations and clinical activity across different practice management systems.
• PHOs draw on their existing data capabilities to apply these definitions to locally held data. PHO analysts understand how information is recorded, coded and stored across their member practices’ systems, and use this knowledge to resolve idiosyncrasies before submitting standardised results to the Dashboard.
• The Dashboard, built and hosted by DataCraft Analytics, consolidates these standardised results into a comparable national view. This creates a practical and scalable picture of what is happening in general practice, without requiring practices to change how they manage their data or needing identifiable patient-level data to be held centrally.

The Dashboard currently includes indicators for diabetes and respiratory conditions, with GPNZ planning to develop a wider suite in 2027.

What did GPNZ and HQSC ask Sapere to do?

In May 2026, GPNZ and the Health Quality & Safety Commission (HQSC) asked Sapere to develop a suite of insights answering the following questions from a national, regional and PHO perspective:

• What does the current Dashboard data say?
• When the data is complete, what could we do with this information?
• What can the Dashboard tell us in the future, and how could we act on that information?

The suite we produced included:

• National, regional and PHO-focused reports that show funders, commissioners and PHO leaders how the Dashboard can inform decisions at their level.
• Posters that each highlight one thing the Dashboard makes visible for the first time.
• How-to guides that walk users step by step through practical questions they can answer in the Dashboard.

A clearer picture of need, care and results in general practice

The GPNZ Dashboard makes visible for the first time:

• how common selected conditions are among enrolled patients, based on diagnoses recorded by general practices
• how well conditions are being managed, through recorded clinical results such as HbA1c, cholesterol and blood pressure
• who may be missing out on recommended medicines, by identifying patients likely to meet treatment criteria but without a recorded prescription
• how results compare across PHOs, regions and population groups.

What is the priority for the sector?

Agreeing standardised, clinically meaningful definitions for diabetes, respiratory conditions and cardiovascular disease has been a significant achievement. The priority now is to build on that foundation by increasing PHO participation and extending reporting across clinical areas. Broader coverage would provide:

• funders and decision-makers to have greater confidence that the patterns they see reflect general practice across the country
• PHOs to compare themselves with peers serving similar populations and places
• patient groups to be linked across diabetes, respiratory conditions and cardiovascular disease, showing where people live with more than one long-term condition
• Dashboard data to be combined with hospital and other health information, to investigate how general practice care relates to outcomes and estimate the value of earlier intervention.

How could decision-makers use dashboard data?

As it continues to develop, the Dashboard could become a nationally consistent and trusted evidence base on population need and general practice activity, with practical uses across the health system:

• National funders could set priorities and test changes to policy settings before they are implemented, such as how new medicine eligibility criteria would affect different population groups.
• Regional commissioners could identify where need and potential gaps in care cross PHO boundaries, and coordinate a regional response.
• PHO leaders and clinical staff could use national and regional benchmarks to focus local improvement priorities and monitor whether gaps in care are narrowing.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to GPNZ and the Health Quality & Safety Commission, as well as DataCraft Analytics and the Clinical Governance Group, for their guidance throughout this work. We also acknowledge the PHO clinical directors, executives and analysts, Health New Zealand and Ministry of Health leaders, Māori health academics and clinicians, and expert advisors from GPNZ, HQSC and the University of Otago who shared their time and insights through interviews and group discussions.