Taranaki District Health Board Health Targets 2012-2013 - Fourth Quarter

27 August 2013

The fourth 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 fourth 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.

This quarter Taranaki DHB has achieved five of the national health targets and seen improvements in three.

Planning and Funding, and Population Health General Manager Sandra Boardman said 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”.

The health target results for Taranaki DHB are:

1) Shorter Stays in ED. Target 95%, Achieved 96%
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.
We are very pleased to have achieved the target with 96% of patients seen in ED admitted or transferred from the ED within six hours.

2) Improved Access to Elective Surgery: Target 100%, Achieved 112%
The national Improved access to elective surgery target has been achieved, with 158,482 elective surgical discharges provided, against a target of 148,259 discharges.  This is 10,223 (7 percent) more than planned. All 20 DHBs achieved the quarter four target. 

3) Shorter Waits for Cancer Treatment: Target 100%, Achieved 100%
We plan to continue this strong performance and our collaborative relationship with MidCentral DHB to maintain the 100 percent cancer waiting time target.

4) Increased Immunisation: Target 85%, Achieved 89%
Increasing immunisation rates are a priority in order to reduce the incidence of preventable disease in our community. We are working closely with primary care organisations, 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.

5) Better Help for Smokers to Quit (Hospital Target): Target 95%, Achieved 97%
We are working hard to ensure patients and visitors to our hospitals are given advice about quitting and are pleased to have exceeded the target again this quarter.

Better Help for Smokers to Quit (Primary Care Target): Target 90%, Achieved 65%
National performance for the primary care target was 56.9 percent. The Taranaki result of 65% represents an improvement of 12 precent since quarter one 2013-13

6) More Heart and Diabetes Checks: Target 75%, Achieved 73 %
Taranaki DHB will continue to work with the primary care organisations in developing their Diabetes Care Improvement Packages and Long Term Conditions programmes to meet this target. We are pleased to see an increase of 3% this quarter. Diabetes and cardiovascular disease continue to be among the main causes of ill health in Taranaki.

Last updated: Wednesday, August 28, 2013