Enrolling Babies at Birth

Summary

This resource provides general practice with practical suggestions to support the process of ensuring newborns are enrolled with general practice as close to birth as possible and no later than two weeks after birth.

It is important that newborns are enrolled close to birth to ensure childhood immunisations are given on time and to maximise the child’s health as they grow. Furthermore early enrolment ensures that newborns have access to affordable and essential health care sooner.

On 1 October 2012, the preliminary newborn enrolment policy (the B code) was implemented to improve the timeliness of enrolment. It enabled general practices to pre-enrol newborns following an National Immunisation Register (NIR) notification that they have been chosen as the newborn’s general practice. This resource complements the 2012 policy changes.

The Ministry of Health established a working group, comprising a range of stakeholders to look at improving the timeliness of enrolling newborns in general practice and inform the development of this resource. The group focused on the process of transferring birth information from hospital systems to the NIR and from NIR to general practice based systems if the GP has been identified as the nominated provider. District health boards (DHBs) are also working to improve their systems and processes.