Focus Still Required To Put Patients

Wednesday 7 April, 2010

Focus Still Required To Put Patients
At Centre Of A Successful Health Reform

The New Zealand health system is on the right path to providing a high level of patient care whilst still continuing to improve workforce planning across primary and secondary care. The challenge is to move from an infrastructure-based service to a patient-centric service. To date, the health service has been concentrating on optimising its existing systems, but there is a growing need for more fundamental changes. Major structural health reform cannot happen overnight, and it is a journey New Zealand healthcare organisations need to continue to focus on.

This is one of the key findings from the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ HealthCast survey “The customisation of diagnosis, care and cure”, which is released today. This report is the latest publication in the HealthCast series on the future of healthcare. It aims to identify worldwide trends in the strategic direction of the healthcare industry and is comprised of 200 in-depth interviews with government leaders, health executives and academics in 25 countries, including 37 New Zealand participants.

Additional findings show the New Zealand health system and current reform processes are already hitting the mark in terms of encouraging primary health care partnerships, freeing up funds to deliver health in different ways and incentivising wellness behaviours to both providers and consumers.

The recommendations from the New Zealand overview of HealthCast emphasise the importance of moving towards an incentive-based payment model in order to have a greater emphasis on patient outcomes. Also identified is the key need for cost saving, and for shifting funding from sickness to wellness, as well as improving patient communication. Other recommendations are the introduction of digitisation of medical records and other technologies and the implementation of workforce care models to ensure the health system is properly supported.

Andy Wotton, PricewaterhouseCoopers partner, says “this new survey will help New Zealand healthcare organisations consider their current models and review suggested recommendations to further improve services and offering for the benefits of both healthcare consumers and providers alike.”

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