Health Targets comments from BOP DHB

Tuesday 27 November

Chief Executive Officer, Phil Cammish.

The Minister of Health’s, Health Targets for quarter one 2012/13 have been released and show that the Bay of Plenty DHB has made gains in a number of the targets including:

• topping the national table for the new Heart and Diabetes Checks
• having the second highest rate of elective service provision at 117%
• again achieving 100% compliance with the Cancer Waiting times target
• already having 83% of our 8-month-olds fully immunised
• maintaining our ED performance through the winter peak and
• showing early inroads into the target for the provision of smoking cessation advice in primary health.

The Health Targets provide a snapshot of the level of performance of health services in selected areas and provide the health sector, both secondary and primary, with a clear focus for action.

Four of the six targets are different for this new quarter: Shorter Waits for Cancer Treatment is now targeting radiotherapy and chemotherapy wait times, the Increased Immunisation target is now targeting eight-month-old babies and in the Better Help for Smokers to Quit target the primary care (GPs and other community providers) data is included alongside the hospital data.

The targets are not only set for the secondary (public hospitals) but also for primary care (general practitioners and other community based organisations).

The quarter one results report on the months of July, August and September 2012.

More Heart and Diabetes Checks

In the More heart and diabetes checks, target Bay of Plenty topped the table.

I am confident that if GPs maintain this momentum we will reach the target of 75% by July 2013.

Increased immunisation

This is a new target that requires that 85% of our eight months old babies will be immunised by July 2013.

In this latest quarter we achieved 83% which is an excellent result.

To achieve the required 85% by this target, babies will need to begin their primary course of immunisation at six weeks, followed by three months and then five months.

Shorter stays in the Emergency Department

Despite the expected impact of winter illnesses we maintained an 89% compliance with the 6 hour ED target while the overall national performance decreased by 2.2%.

In September and October our Emergency Departments achieved 92% with November on target to achieve a similar level.

Over 63,008 people have sought treatment in our Emergency Departments in the past year.

Improved access to elective (planned) surgery

We are placed second in the rankings in this target at 117% of the expected throughput.

During August we set a new record with 717 elective operations performed.

Increasing numbers of Western Bay people are provided elective surgery at Whakatane hospital for Dental, Orthopaedics, General Surgery and Gynaecology.

Better Help for Smokers to Quit- changed target

Better help for smokers to quit target is that 95% of patients who smoke are seen by a health professional in public hospitals, and 90% of patients who smoke are seen by a health practitioner in primary care, and are offered brief advice and support to quit smoking.

Our hospitals (Tauranga and Whakatane collectively) moved marginally downward from 94% to 93% in this quarter. Whilst this is disappointing the primary sector improved their performance to 44%, a result that is above the national average of 39.4% for the quarter.

Shorter waits for cancer treatment

We continue to meet the 100% target for access to both Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy.

ENDS

© Scoop Media