Important Update

Dear Patients of Bester McKay,

We are writing to let you know about an important change that will allow us to provide improved healthcare services for you.

Bester McKay is merging with Vercoe Brown, another Invercargill medical practice. The two practices will continue to operate out of the two existing facilities until the end of the year.

Why?

As you’ll be aware, with our long standing GPs retiring, the GP shortage in New Zealand and Invercargill being particularly hard to recruit for, we have to look at new ways to deliver care, and develop ways to better support our in-clinic teams with local and virtual clinicians.

This merger will allow us to do a number of things to improve your access to clinical care including:

• Decrease wait times and cover leave: the larger team of doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, pharmacists, health improvement practitioners, health coaches, receptionists and administrators will be able to support you and each other when they are on sick and annual leave or when we are recruiting new team members.

• Recruit more clinicians: with a larger clinic, we will be able to invest in hiring a Clinical Director to oversee and improve the quality of care delivered to you, hire and train more clinicians and more easily access virtual clinical support when we need to (online GPs).

• Improve facilities: We are still working through what makes most sense for where we locate a larger, unified practice. However, with a larger patient base and bigger team, we will be able to invest in improvements either to our existing facilities or a new facility.

Key Dates and Next Steps

• April 1st, 2026 - Bester McKay merge into Vercoe Brown legally. Your enrollment will transfer to Vercoe Brown. Services will still be delivered out of the Bester McKay site.

• April 8th, 2026 - The Bester McKay patient database will merge with the Vercoe Brown database. This means no matter if you seek care at either site, or a Vercoe Brown team member is working at Bester McKay, they can see your whole health record and provide you better care.

What does this mean for you?

Nothing changes immediately for you, continue to access care as you usually do. You may start to see new faces as part of your care and support team and you may have options to get care from a different clinic if there is better availability.

Please be kind to our staff

Our teams are going through changes to systems, processes and getting to know new team members. We ask that you’re patient with them through this change.

As we make any decisions regarding physical location, we will give you substantial notice.

In the meantime, we are excited about this new chapter and look forward to delivering better, more comprehensive care to our community from our combined, stronger practice.

Sincerely,

The Teams at Bester McKay and Vercoe Brown

More information

For more information please read our FAQ page.