Health Targets - How is Northland DHB performing?

The third quarter results of the 2009/10 Health Targets have been published within national and local newspapers today.  Northland DHB results indicate some areas of performance improvement and other areas where performance has declined. 

Published to encourage public scrutiny of the health sector, the six health targets cover shorter stays in the emergency department, smoking, immunisation, diabetes and cardiovascular services as well as reduced waiting times for critical cancer treatment and elective surgery.

Dr Gloria Johnson, Northland DHB's spokesperson and chief medical advisor says electives continue to be delivered to an outstanding standard but again our own data for immunisation of Northland children requires significant work.

"The Health Target age is 2 years old and we are working closely with Northland PHO's to proactive identify the pathway children in Northland take to access immunisation.  We recently had a measles outbreak in the Hokianga.  Ideally, all children in Northland would be immunised but there are members of the community who choose not to immunise."

Northland DHB's emergency departments have implemented a range of initiatives such as identification of problem and solutions but delays in acquiring a dedicated computer system is frustrating our ability to monitor and therefore change performance.  The district health board is making every effort to replace this system.

Further progress to achieve the national targets is well underway to better help for smokers to quit but although this target continues to climb steadily, achieving this target by the fourth quarter will be challenging.

"Our performance on this target increased from 29% to 36% this quarter.  And with the recent tax increase and as World Smokefree Day approaches, patients themselves will be more motivated to seek staff support to quit," said Dr Johnson.

"In addition we are aware that we do not record all of the smoking cessation support that we provide and if we can improve our data collection, then our performance on this target should improve."

"We are achieving outstanding results in some areas and in others, further work is required but we do have until July 2010 to ensure we meet the Government health targets."

Shorter waits for radiotherapy, delivered by ADHB, has fallen short due to a peak in demand.   A number of measures have been taken by the service to increase patient flow. These include staff working longer shifts, opening the service for evening shifts and creating more flexible operating hours.  To ensure that all patients receive timely care, ADHB will outsource the treatment of some patients.

Each target is one of a number of methods we use to measure our performance and while these new targets have been challenging to implement, they will produce measurable gains in patient care through steady improvement.

Health targets do not replace other health priorities but are essential performance indicators, providing district health boards a focus for action and can be measured as to the impact they are making in improving health for all New Zealanders.

To obtain a copy of the Health Target results or for more information visit the Ministry of Health's health target website http://www.moh.govt.nz/healthtargets.


 2009/10 Health Targets Third Quarter - Northland Results 132.52 Kb

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For further information, please contact:
Fleur King, Public Relations Manager
Northland District Health Board 
Phone (09) 430 4101 ext 3315