Legislated health targets not the answer to ensuring efficient public health system

“Legislated health targets would be a clunky, heavy-handed way to monitor public hospitals and could end up putting patients at risk,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

“If they were made a legal requirement, then governments would need to ensure a requirement to adequately fund our public health services was also enshrined in law. You can’t have one without the other.”

He was commenting on reports that National wants to make health targets a legal requirement with a new bill but allow governments to decide what targets are set https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/105915451/national-wants-the-health-targets-to-be-a-legal-requirement.

Mr Powell says targets only measures things that can be counted, which excludes much of what happens in public hospitals and other health services.

“Targets are not a reliable assessment of how well a district health board is performing. They can also be overly bureaucratic and impose rigid compliance costs and additional paperwork on busy health professionals and hospital managers.

“There’s a risk of performance being unfairly judged and punishments following if targets are not achieved. If there is non-achievement against the targets, this may well be due to factors beyond the control of hospital managers or health professionals.

“For example, an increase in the number of people turning up at hospital emergency departments for urgent treatment coupled with a limited number of beds available in wards then undermines a hospital’s ability to meet an imposed target of waiting no longer than six hours in emergency departments.”
ENDS

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