Hawke’s Bay’s focus on immunisation tops health target

1 December 2011

Hawke’s Bay’s focus on immunisation tops health target

Hawke’s Bay District Health Board continues to lead the way in two-year-olds being fully immunised quarter one results of the national Health Targets show.

Hawke’s Bay, recorded 94 percent against a target of 95 percent and was the top performing DHB for increasing immunisation of two year olds in the country.

Chief executive Kevin Snee said the DHB’s healthy population’s team, public health nurses GP practices and practice nurses had worked hard to put good systems in place to effectively immunise children against some very debilitating diseases.

“This year we had a whopping cough and measles outbreak which would have been much worse if we had not had such a large proportion of our under two-year-olds immunised. Outbreaks like this, which have been much harder to control in other parts of the country, are one of the reasons immunisation is so important in protecting the health and well being of our children.”

Dr Snee said overall he was pleased with the Health Target results.

“The shorter stay in emergency department target was slightly down on last quarter due to an increase in winter presentations, however, in the last two months, of this quarter; ED had consistently managed to hit the 95 percent, which was very pleasing.

“The better diabetes and cardiovascular services result was being looked at in conjunction with the Ministry of Health as the DHB and Health Hawke’s Bay data had showed a significant increase in the number of cardiovascular risk assessments completed, contrary to the Ministry’s figures,” he said.

“This target is being reviewed by the Ministry as it has not had the clinical benefit it should have and some of the complexities in collecting data are reflected in Hawke’s Bay’s result.”

Dr Snee said there was still work to be done to provide better help for smokers to quit target which he hoped would be reflected in next quarter’s results.

It was pleasing to note the elective result was one percent up on the target of 100 percent with more people having elective surgery and waiting less time, he said.

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