Our recommendations

We recommend that district health boards:

1. better identify, consider, and respond to affordability barriers when planning, funding, and providing after-hours services;
2. where it is within their influence, better identify, consider, and respond to access barriers other than affordability – such as transport barriers – when planning, funding, and providing after-hours services; and
3. comprehensively review and, where necessary, redesign their after-hours service networks to ensure that those networks will be more sustainable in the future (for those district health boards not already doing so).