Community Health care providers are an essential part of the healthcare system in NZ and include GPs, Pharmacists, Home based Support services, Rest homes and many more. It is just as important for these providers to have plans as it is for the Hospitals to ensure communities can effectively respond to disasters and other unplanned events and recover from them efficiently.

Emergencies vary in size and impact and it is hard to plan for everything. To assist providers in the community the NMHB is currently engaged in a project to assist community providers. The first stage is to build a complete database of all providers and a single point of contact for emergency notifications and communication. Following on from this the second stage will be seminars on Emergency management and Pandemic planning. These seminars will be looking at effective planning and tools to either update existing plans or develop new plans. 

Currently the NMDHB is also developing emergency flipcharts for the community provider sector. 

To assist with current planning the NMDHB has put together the following resources: (This area is currently under development).

• Business continuity guide
• Service continuity plan
• Checklists
• Scenarios