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Waikato DHB Exceeds Targets, Fully Compliant
5 August 2007
Waikato DHB Exceeds Targets, Fully Compliant
Waikato District Health Board exceeded targets set by the Ministry of Health for hip and knee joint replacements and cataract operations in the 2006/2007 year.
The DHB completed 750 hip and knee joint replacements
* 59 more than required and 989 cataract operations * five
more than the target set by the ministry’s elective
services patient flow indicator.
The ministry’s elective services report, released on Friday, shows Waikato DHB surgical services were given the green light of compliance by the ministry for the year ended June 30. The indicator also reveals for the first time Waikato exceeded some of its targets. Waikato DHB had a dispensation from compliance for two months from April while iSOFT, a new computer patient software system installed during Easter Weekend, was bedded in.
Now the results are confirmed, health services general manager Jan Adams said the news Waikato DHB was keeping on top of its inpatient surgery elective services list was a credit to all Health Waikato staff.
The ministry has, as a result, released for elective services an additional $2 million funding for the 2006/2007 year and Waikato DHB will now attract up to an additional $5 million for Health Waikato, the DHB’s hospital and community-based health provider.
“We have still got three areas we want to focus on improving - gynaecology, paediatric surgery and orthopaedics * but at least we know our data is clean and accurate - what we see is what we’ve got.
“This is the first step in a process for us which started in the middle of last year and one we will continue to monitor closely.
“We acknowledge it’s taken us longer than other DHBs but we feel we’ve done a thorough job,” said Mrs Adams. There are more than 5000 people on Waikato’s elective services list. Ministry of Health Elective Services manager Karen Orsborn said the ministry was “very pleased” that Waikato DHB had met elective service indicators for March to June following the successful introduction of its new patient management system.
As a result the DHB was able to access new funding for elective services from February 2007.
“Waikato DHB has worked very hard to make sure it has a fair and effective booking system in place. This will help ensure elective services are provided in a fair and timely way and patients have more certainly about what treatment will take place and when,” said Ms Orsborn.
Elective services operate on the principle of giving all patients certainty of whether they will receive elective treatment or not within a defined time period. Waiting lists are a thing of the past.
The new approach to elective services (treatment that is not acute) is very different from the previous ‘waiting list’ system. Under the waiting list system, all patients eligible for public health care could be placed on a waiting list for treatment. Patient cases were prioritised to ensure the most serious cases went first, which effectively meant that if your case was of a lower priority it would not be treated but remain on a list. In this regard, it was deemed that the ‘waiting list’ system gave false hope of treatment for a proportion of people, and it was better for their future health that they be advised of this, and returned to the care of their GP.
Today patients are given clarity of their situation early. There are two stages to the process of accepting a patient into the elective services system: 1) GP referrals are assessed within 10 days of receipt and either sent back to their GP, or accepted for a ‘specialist first assessment’. 2) A specialist first assessment takes place within six months of the referral being accepted, and will result in either the patient being given certainty of treatment, put on Active Review, or sent back to their GP. If the patient’s case meets the treatment threshold following the specialist first assessment, the DHB is required to treat that patient within six months.
Active Review allows DHBs to monitor patients who are just short of the treatment threshold for a maximum of 18 months (actively reviewed six monthly). If they do not reach the threshold in that time, they are returned to their GP.
ENDS
Waikato District Health Board
Healthy People. Excellent Care
Waikato District Health Board (DHB) employs over 6500 people and plans, funds and provides hospital and health services to more than 391,770 people in a region covering eight per cent of New Zealand.
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