Improvements in four health targets

Improvements in four of the national health targets, released today, is good news for Hawke’s Bay District Health Board and the community as it begins to see the benefits of a number of projects pay off.

Chief executive Kevin Snee said two priority projects within Hawke’s Bay Hospital, which had been running for some months, were now making an impact. The Acute Inpatient Management (AIM24/7) project was improving the quality and timeliness of care for patients seen in or admitted through the Emergency Department (ED), and the Theatre Productivity project was working to improve the ability to provide more elective surgery for the people of Hawke’s Bay.

“This hasn’t been a simple exercise, it’s taken a huge amount of work from a group of very committed people to see change happen. It hasn’t been simply a matter of doing things differently it’s taken cultural and transformational change to the way we do things – and we are beginning to see the benefits of that,” he said.

The community was the big benefactor of the increased immunisation target, which the DHB leads nationally at 96 percent against a target of 95 percent, more people than ever before were having their heart and diabetes checks and the DHB was still doing well in providing more help for smokers to quit. Dr Snee said these targets were only achievable with the collaboration and support of clinicians in the community and the strong partnership with Health Hawke’s Bay (PHO).

“We will only ever be able to meet the demand on our hospitals and specialist services if we work hard towards improving the wellbeing of our community. There is still much to be done to improve our smoking rates as it remains the single most important cause of preventable ill health and premature death, but we are making, albeit small, inroads and we will all benefit from those.”

The DHB was making a start towards meeting the new Faster Cancer Treatment target, where 85 percent of patients would receive their first cancer treatment within 62 days of being referred with a high suspicion of cancer and a need to be seen within two weeks by July 2016.
ENDS

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