Pātiki and Waharua Kōpito patterns
The latest quarter of health target results released today show good progress being made in all five target areas.
Health New Zealand’s chief executive, Dr Dale Bramley, says the results are very encouraging.
“These latest results show significant progress is being made to improve access to healthcare services”.
“We achieved the milestones nationally for three out of five targets this quarter (faster cancer treatment, shorter wait times for first specialist assessment (FSA), and shorter wait times for elective treatment) and were just 0.1 per cent shy of reaching the milestone for shorter stays in emergency departments.
“Although we did not reach the immunisation target – coverage improved by 5.5 per cent in the June quarter relative to the same quarter the previous year, with immunisation coverage achieving the highest level in 3 years.
“Lifting immunisation coverage remains critical to ensuring children are protected from infectious disease,” Dr Bramley says.
“Our hospitals have been exceptionally busy, managing increased demand caused by seasonal illnesses. While we plan for and anticipate these surges, this winter’s volume of presentations has been unprecedented.”
Despite this growth, our emergency departments managed to improve from the same time last year, with 73.9% of patients treated, discharged or admitted within six hours, up from 71.2 per cent on the same quarter in 23/24.
As has recently been announced, $20 million will go into placing more staff at the clinical frontline to relieve pressure and deliver faster care for patients, which will help drive further progress.
There was also improvement in shorter waits for first specialist assessments and shorter waits for elective treatment.
"The latest results show in most districts more patients are being seen within four months for first specialist assessments and elective procedures compared to the previous quarter. Our focus is on continuing to improve access and reduce waitlists.”
The Government's electives boost initiative provided funding for 10,579 elective treatments to be delivered by 30 June 2025.
"Our teams worked hard to surpass this number as well as achieving the health target of 63% for elective treatment,” Dr Bramley says.
Progress was also made this quarter towards increasing capacity to deliver the 30 new cancer medicines funded by Pharmac.