Latest News Taranaki District Health Board Health Targets 2012-2013 - Second Quarter
26 February 2013
The second quarter health targets of 2012-2013 have been released by the Ministry of Health.
Ministry of Health 
- Health Targets website
The health targets results for the second quarter of 2012/13 have been released by the Ministry of Health.
The Taranaki health sector continues to work towards the targets, which are indicative of a wider range of services and efforts in priority areas.
“We are committed to working towards achieving the targets, and recognise there are areas for improvement,” Planning and Funding, and Population Health General Manger Sandra Boardman says.
She says a focus on the six key areas is important to continue to improve health, reduce inequalities and improve the quality of health services for Taranaki people. “The targets provide a useful indication of how we are doing.”
This Quarter Taranaki DHB has improved in four of the health targets.
The health targets are:
The Health Targets are:
1) Shorter Stays in ED. Target 95%, Achieved 93%
The team continues to focus on improving the flow of patients in our acute pathway work. This has been an enormous effort by the Emergency Department and the whole hospital approach.
While we are disappointed to be below the target of 95% of patients seen in ED admitted or transferred from the ED within six hours, we are pleased that we have achieved a 1% improvement from the last quarter.
2) Improved Access to Elective Surgery: Target 100%, Achieved 114%
Quarter two results for the elective surgery target show the national target has been achieved with 78,731 elective surgical discharges provided, against a target of 74,799 discharges. This is 3932 (5 percent) more than planned.
Taranaki DHB is one of 15 DHBs to achieve this target and one of 10 to be 5% ahead of plan.
3) Shorter Waits for Cancer Treatment: Target 100%, Achieved 100%
Nationally 100 percent of patients, who were ready for treatment, received their radiotherapy and chemotherapy within four weeks of the decision to treat.
We plan to maintain our collaborative relationship with MidCentral DHB to maintain the 100% cancer waiting time target.
4) Increased Immunisation: Target 85%, Achieved 87%
Increasing immunisation rates are a priority in order to reduce the incidence of preventable disease in our community. We are working closely with PHOs, Hospital Services, outreach immunisation services, National Immunisation Register and Well Child Providers on strategies to improve immunisation uptake including early enrolment of newborns with a general practice. Taranaki DHB was one of 15 DHBs to reach the new target - 85 percent of eight-month olds are fully immunised.
5) Better Help for Smokers to Quit: Target 95%, Achieved 93%
This quarter, the hospital Better help for smokers to quit target improved by 0.9 percent to 94.6 percent nationally. We are working hard to ensure patients and visitors to our hospitals are given advice about quitting. This is important to us as from 1 February 2013 Taranaki DHB grounds and buildings are fully Smokefree/Auahi Kore. We are pleased with our achievement this quarter, with an improvement of 6% from last quarter.
6) More Heart and Diabetes Checks: Target 75%, Achieved 67%
Taranaki DHB will continue to work with the PHOs in developing their Diabetes Care Improvement Packages and Long Term Conditions programmes to meet this new target. We are pleased to see an increase of 4% this quarter, making Taranaki DHB one of the top three performers in this target.
Every 1 percent improvement nationally in the More heart and diabetes checks target equates to approximately 12,500 New Zealanders getting a cardiovascular risk assessment. Diabetes and cardiovascular disease continue to be among the main causes of ill health in Taranaki.
Last updated: Wednesday, February 27, 2013