Sustained improvements in the Government's Health Targets

30 November 2011

Please attribute the comments to Chief Executive Officer, Phil Cammish.

The Minister of Health’s health targets for quarter one 2011/12 have been released. The Health Targets were introduced as a way of improving the performance of health services and provide the health sector, both secondary and primary, with a clear focus for action.

The quarter one results report on the months of July, August, September 2011.

We have continued to make gains in meeting our targets. When comparing our quarter one results with this year (2011/12) and 2010/11 we have continued to sustain our previous progress, and significantly so, in some areas.

Bay of Plenty District Health Board health target results for 2010/11

The standout performances in this quarter one are in the Better diabetes and cardiovascular services, where we have increased our ranking from 13 to seven and our percentage from 70 to 78%; and Better help for smokers to quit with an increase in ranking from 19 to 14 and our percentage from 57 to 87%.

It is also reassuring to see another increase in our Immunisation target with a ranking increase from 20 to 14 and percentage increase from 74 to 89%.

Last quarter alone the percentage was raised by 2% to 89%.

The national performance against the Shorter stays in ED target deteriorated slightly, primarily due to pressure on services over the winter months. This was also the situation for us, dropping two percent to 88% but improving 4% on Q1 2010 / 11.

Bay of Plenty District Health Board health target results for 2011/12

Improved access to elective surgery

For another consecutive quarter, we lifted our performance above the national target to 108%, retaining our ranking and achieving 73 more surgeries than planned.

Shorter stays in emergency departments

As part of our on-going commitment to achieve this target we are continuing to look at how we can improve our performance and a significant amount of work, often involving creative thinking, is going into addressing this target.

One of the many reasons people are sometimes held in ED, is that there are beds are not immediately available in our wards.

To address this issue a Transit Lounge has been set up in Tauranga Hospital. The lounge provides a comfortable and relaxing place for patients awaiting discharge and/or collection by their family. The lounge allows beds to be freed up in wards for those unwell patients who need to be admitted to hospital.

We have identified that there is a timing issue between the arrival of patients in ED and the availability of beds in the hospital. Trends show that peak ED presentations occur at 10am, whilst most of our discharges occur at 3pm.

The new Transit Lounge can accommodate up to 20 people in chairs rather than beds, with food and tea/coffee available to patients while they are waiting to go home. Family and friends are able to collect their family/whanau directly from the lounge.

Shorter waits for cancer treatment

Again, a good result particularly given that from January 2011 everyone needing radiation treatment had to have received their treatment within four weeks. Previously it was within six weeks.

Better help for smokers to quit

Our results have significantly improved over the last quarter with a 30% jump over the past year. This quarter is 10% higher than the previous quarter.

Smoking rates of people coming into our Bay of Plenty hospitals have been higher than the national average, at 22.30% (Census 2006) and have been estimated to have reduced to 18.25%.

Better diabetes and cardiovascular services

Our continuous improvement in this target has paid off with us jumping in our ranking from 13 to seven and lifting our performance by six percent in the last quarter.

This health target is made up of three distinct components; diabetes detection and follow-up, diabetes management and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessment. The target table does not discriminate between the results for each measure; it is solely an average of the three measures.

These quarter one results demonstrate the work that staff have put into improving our systems and processes, working with our PHO partners and showing how creative thinking coupled with innovative solutions can lead to better and more timely patient care.

A great quarter one result for us.

ENDS

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