Health target results – Faster ED care for Wellingtonians

26 May 2015

Health target results – Faster ED care for Wellingtonians

Nearly 500 more people were admitted, discharged or transferred within six hours of presenting to Wellington Hospital’s emergency department between January and March this year, an increase of three percent from the previous three months.

Latest health target results released today show that despite another record increase in the number of presentations to the emergency department in the first quarter of 2015, Capital & Coast District Health Board (CCDHB) has improved its performance against the shorter stays in emergency departments target, and three of the five other targets.

“These results reflect the improvements we’ve made to change how we care for people in hospital and the community, and the tremendous efforts made by our staff to provide high-quality healthcare for our patients,” says chief operating officer Chris Lowry.

“Elective surgery performance has improved and we are on track to meet the target this year as we have done in previous years,” she says.

The DHB is also providing more people with help to quit smoking, rising from 80% in the last quarter to 92% of patients provided with brief advice and support to quit this quarter.

“Quitting smoking is the single best thing a person can do for their health. While we have some more work to do in this area to achieve the target, it is promising to see we are supporting more of our patients to do this, especially at the primary care level,” she says.

CCDHB continues to lead the country in the new Faster Cancer Treatment target, and achieved the national immunisation target as second-highest performer.

“Our goal is to achieve all six targets. These latest results are very promising and reflect the amount of time and effort put in by our staff put in to date,” Ms Lowry says.

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