SCDHB

South Canterbury DHBs' performance against the Government's new health targets is included in national advertising in major newspapers this morning.

The Minister of Health, Tony Ryall, announced his plans to publish health targets in a speech earlier this month.

He said, "One of our priority areas is to improve public hospital services and reduce waiting times for patients. Publishing the Health Target results is one way of engaging the public in how well their DHB is doing."

South Canterbury DHB Chief Executive Chris Fleming says South Canterbury has performed extremely well on some targets.

“South Canterbury ranks as the top DHB in the country when it comes to increasing childhood immunisation; and is also first equal on shorter waits for radiotherapy cancer treatment. We have also met the target set by the Minister for shorter stays in the emergency department.This is a great result and reflects on the hard work done by staff and health professionals in these areas.”

The six Health Targets are:

Shorter Stays in Emergency Departments
“The purpose of this target is not to rush people through the Emergency Department, but to minimise unnecessary waits. Timaru Hospital has met the Minister’s target of admitting, discharging or transferring 95 per cent of patients from the Emergency Department within six hours.”

Improved Access to Elective Surgery
This target measures how close South Canterbury DHB is to delivering the amount of elective surgery discharges it has agreed to. In the first quarter we were five per cent behind target. Some of the elective surgery not performed is tertiary-level surgery due to be carried out by other hospitals for the South Canterbury population, and this is ordinarily variable across the year. At Timaru hospital there were fewer surgical discharges than planned due to heavier than usual demand on medical beds over winter, cancelled lists due to surgeon sickness and the phasing of surgeon leave. The DHB Production Plan will see all agreed elective surgery performed by the end of the financial year, and we are confident of achieving this plan.”

Shorter Waits for Cancer Treatment
“All South Canterbury patients needing radiotherapy start treatment within six weeks of their first specialist assessment. Radiotherapy treatment is provided to South Canterbury patients by the regional oncology centre in Christchurch.”

Increased Immunisation
“South Canterbury has delivered an outstanding result in this target. This is welcome in light of current outbreaks of measles and whooping cough in New Zealand.”

Better Help for Smokers to Quit
“This is a new target that requires new data collection. South Canterbury’s result is low because in the past we have not had the Information System and coding capacity to record this patient data. This is now in place and improvements are expected to show for South Canterbury in the next quarter results.”

Better Diabetes and Cardiovascular Services
“Good results in this target require good work at GP and primary care level, and good integration between primary care and hospital-based diabetes services. The DHB and the Primary Health Organisation will be working with general practices to improve this result further.” 


The South Canterbury DHB Results are available here.

For more information contact:
Arlene Goss
027 276 4259