Lay summary
Our objectives are to understand the capacity of routine general practice to respond to the high demand for care during an influenza pandemic and to compare the model of using routine general practice with the model of using a centralised Community Based Assessment Centre (CBAC) for responding to a pandemic. We will use routinely collected data from general practices and emergency departments across the lower North Island in the winters of 2008 and 2009, and data collected from the CBAC used in Christchurch during the pandemic influenza wave of winter 2009. The impact of this work will be to inform decisions about whether and/or up to what point, to rely upon routine general practice, or to implement a CBAC model in the event of future waves of pandemic disease. We will define the utilisation threshold at which point a CBAC would be effective from a workload and resource perspective.