Pātiki and Waharua Kōpito patterns
Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora (Health NZ) has published the second report for key primary healthcare measures and Primary Health Organisation (PHO) performance, which shows an improvement in immunisation rates for the quarter to 31 December 2024.
The quarterly public report shows how many people enrolled with each PHO across the country have been supported to immunise their children. It also reports on smoking cessation rates and referrals.
As the main provider of childhood immunisations, Primary Health Organisations and their general practices play a critical role in increasing immunisation coverage.
Immunisation rates for the PHO enrolled population have improved overall between quarter one and quarter two, as shown in the quarterly report.
Dr Nick Chamberlain, National Director National Public Health Service says, “Health NZ is working towards a goal of 95% of tamariki aged 24-months to be fully immunised by 2030, and an interim target of 84% by June 2025. We need to lift performance across many parts of the health system to achieve this, including primary care.
“Significant investment has been allocated to PHOs to support their practices’ immunisation activities to help us achieve the immunisation health target.
“We are pleased to see progress with an increase of 0.8% for children fully immunised at 8-months of age and 1.5% for children fully immunised by 24-months. However, there is still much to do to reach our childhood immunisation health target, and we continue to focus on this.”
Childhood immunisation is critical because babies and children need immunisation to provide ongoing protection from many life-threatening diseases. The indicators reported are for immunisation for 8 and 24-month-old children, and smoking cessation support rates (15-74 years). This quarterly report includes data for PHO enrolled population and is different to the health targets performance data which includes the non-enrolled population.
The report shows positive results across the quarter including:
- An increase in the 8-month rate for enrolled children from 80.2% to 81.0%.
- An increase in the 24-month rate for enrolled children from 77.6% to 79.1%.
“While we recognise there are different populations with different access challenges across the country, there is a high 40% variation among PHOs. We value our partnership with PHOs and general practices and look forward to working together to achieve the childhood immunisation health target,” says Dr Nick Chamberlain.
Martin Hefford, Director Living Well says, “It’s important that we publicly report primary care performance data to ensure everyone working across the health system, and people who use primary and community care services, understands where we’re doing well, where we need to improve and how this is changing over time.
“Smoking cessation is also important to report on because evidence shows quitting smoking is the best thing people who smoke can do for their health,”’ says Martin Hefford.
In March 2025, the Minister of Health announced a further 400 primary care placements for graduate registered nurses from 2025. This initiative will help to plug vacancies in general practice teams for nurse roles and improve access to primary care, including immunisation, for our communities.
In the future, Health NZ plans to include reporting updates on performance against a wider range of measures including cardiovascular risk assessment, service utilisation, GP practice closed books, GP FTE per thousand people, patient experience and newborn enrolments.