The team won excellence in provider collaboration and integration, and commitment to quality improvement and patient safety; each recognising teamwork to better patient outcomes and initiative to improve services and better meet community needs.
Dr Denton said improving patient safety through the wisest use and safeties of medicines was at the heart of placing pharmacists in general practices to work alongside doctors.
"As a nurse supports a doctor, a pharmacist now supports a doctor and their speciality is medicines and medicines safety. These days we've got an ageing population, especially in Hawke's Bay, and people have very complex medicines regimes."
"It's quite a precise role but it's adding to the team and at the end of the day the patient outcomes become that much better."
The team of eight equivalent fulltime staff had very much become "one of the gang" in their respective general practices and built amazing relationships across the health field, she said.
"It's been very easy in health to all work in silos to some degree. Everybody's so busy doing what they've been doing but when you start working together with a team approach you're bringing all the skills of that team to the table."
Dr Denton said what was most rewarding for her team was seeing the different in a patient's wellness when their medicines were reviewed.
"Sometimes medicines are never reviewed or stopped. So I think the biggest thing is to see a patient in their own home not being able to do very much and then meeting them several weeks later when they're out and about doing lots of things."
She said she felt "enormously lucky" to lead such an integrated team, and added that having such a variety of skill sets in one facility bettered patient outcomes.
"When the patient who is at the centre of it is getting the best of each lot of skills and it can't help but be a winner.
"Overall this has been another thing that makes it safer for patients and the patients are very much at the centre of what these guys are doing."