Many people will be familiar with the three monthly call or appointment to the doctors to get your prescriptions for medications renewed - but that could be a thing of the past.

The government is looking to increase prescription supply from three to 12 months in a bid to try and ease the pressure on general practice doctors.

The Ministry of Health has asked for feedback on the proposal which would allow doctors to prescribe a year's worth of certain medications - for collection in 3 monthly repeats.

The Health Minister Simeon Brown said this was just one of a range of options being considered to improve access to timely, quality primary healthcare.

The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners medical director Luke Bradford told Nine to Noon they did not support a move to 12 months.

"We have submitted that we would support a move to six months on a patient safety and sustainability basis, but 12 months leaves too long a gap.

"When you get a repeat prescription, when you phone in or you go in, a number of things happen and that is not just a few clicks of a button."

Bradford said doctors needed to manage their patients conditions including blood pressure, heart failure and breathing. He said they also needed to look over any interactions with other medications or recorded changes.

"We bring that all together and then look through the medications again, and if you move that out to 12 months, that still has to happen, but the practices will end up having to set reminders for how that occurs and that is increased admin for a service that isn't fund.

"But we see that some extension to the length is really sensible."

He said it would take pressure off GP's for those that needed "straight forward" medications while saving the "costly" GP visits for patients, but it did not reduce the admin for GP's.

The financial impact on practices that rely on revenue from current prescription renewals could also be substantial, with one specialist GP calculating a $320,000 loss in a patient population of 14,500.

"All that work is going to have to happen anyway... we are still going to be doing the monitoring of the bloods, we are still going to have to reconcile what's happening with any other specialist you have gone and seen.

"At the moment that happens because you call up, we look at all the results, we send the prescription and there's often a charge related to that - without that occurring there won't be a charge and we will have to do it anyway.

"I think the danger is, the move to the 12 months, like I said, the work is gonna have to be done anyway so it doesn't reduce the admin on that," Bradford said.

The proposal comes back into the spotlight after Christopher Luxon told Newstalk ZB last week: "I think there are things we could be doing to make regular prescriptions be extended for longer periods so you are not in front of a GP."

-RNZ