Enrolment with a general practice and primary health organisation
Primary health organisation (PHO) enrolment and access to enrolment data.
Enrolment in a primary health organisation (PHO) is voluntary
Most people in New Zealand are enrolled through their general practice (GP) and gain the benefits of being with a PHO, such as:
- cheaper doctors’ visits
- reduced costs of prescription medicines.
Find out more about eligibility for publicly funded health services and enrolling with a GP.
Eligibility for publicly funded health and disability services
Enrolment demographics
Information is available on the number of people who are enrolled in a PHO and the demographic details of enrollees by:
- PHO
- Lead district
- District where the person has a permanent home (District of domicile).
Access to primary care
The table below shows the estimated percentage of the total population who are enrolled in a PHO by ethnicity as of October 2025.
| Ethnicity | Number | Percentage |
| Māori | 796,702 | 85% |
| Pacific | 378,735 | 100% |
| Asian | 948,735 | 90% |
| Other | 2,985,708 | 98% |
| Total | 5,109,880 | 94% |
The estimated coverage for a population is sometimes slightly more than 100% as the:
- underlying population comes from Stats NZ population projections
- enrolment number comes from the primary care data collection.
Detailed information on the number and percentage of the total population who are enrolled in a PHO for each of the 20 districts is in the spreadsheets below. The information is available for each quarter since April 2019, and is separated into:
- ethnicity
- deprivation
- gender
- age group.
Updated population projections were used in the calculation of the January 2021 and January 2022 statistics. The updated projections use the latest subnational population estimates and updated methodology to calculate migration. The combined impact is a variation in projected population for some districts when compared to releases before January 2021.