Quarter 4 health targets – Canterbury improves or maintains

Tuesday August 25, 2015

Quarter 4 health targets – Canterbury improves or maintains performance in all targets

The Canterbury Health system continues improving against National Health Targets and is exceeding them in areas such as emergency department wait times, elective surgery and hospital smoking cessation.

The health board’s continued improvement is despite increased pressure on the system in the quarter due to colder weather, an ongoing surge in demand with the rebuild and the continuing earthquake recovery.

National Health Targets information released today shows the Canterbury District Health Board has performed well against five of the six national targets. It has either improved or maintained its performance across all categories.

Canterbury District Health Board chief executive David Meates says its noteworthy performance against targets is due to both an amazing ongoing commitment from staff and a focus on improving systems and communication throughout the health system.

“I continue to be humbled by the efforts staff put in day after day. This effort means we are improving against targets, but as always the real focus is how our improvement translates to better patient care. The ongoing effort takes real commitment because there are still many hurdles for staff to jump such as reduced post-quake capacity and ongoing re-location of services due to facilities repairs, demolition and redevelopment.’’

Mr Meates says the target for emergency department (ED) waiting times (95% of patients admitted, discharged or transferred from ED within six hours) was exceeded this quarter. Ninety-six percent of patients were discharged or transferred within the prescribed time frame.

“This is an excellent performance as ED attendances continue to increase. A key aspect in achieving this success is the number of people being seen in primary care, particularly after-hours. The 24 Hour Surgery, Moorhouse Medical and Riccarton Clinic are also seeing increased numbers of people in the community, and this is helping the flow of patients through our emergency department. Other initiatives in place include more care being provided in people’s own homes; ensuring the growing population of unenrolled patients has appropriate information about primary care; and the evolution of our live patient flow ‘dashboards’ which track patient flow through the system, and help us rapidly identify any blockages.’’

Mr Meates says another target area worth highlighting was ‘increased immunisation’.

“Primary care teams continue to work hard to ensure our region’s children are protected through immunisation, and have done particularly well in achieving very high numbers of immunisations for Maori children. While we just missed the national target achieving 94% (the target is 95%), it was pleasing that 96 percent of eligible Maori children were fully immunised in the fourth quarter results. The Ministry of Health target is that 95% of all eligible eight month olds are fully immunised.

“Good progress against targets in the areas of immunisation, smoking cessation and heart and diabetes checks relate to the DHB working closely with Primary Health Organisations (PHOs) to support achievement against these targets, says Mr Meates.

“There has been a focus, and rapid improvement, against targets for more heart and diabetes checks. This involves ongoing discussion with the PHOs and general practice teams about any changes in the measurement of statistics, and providing information and support about how to capture figures on the growing number of checks being done.”

“Helping Cantabrians stop smoking has been an area of focus and progress for the Canterbury District Health Board. The target for providing stop smoking assistance for hospitalised patients is 95%, but the Canterbury DHB provided this help to 96% of this group. Eighty-nine percent of smokers attending primary care received help and advice to quit, compared to a national target of 90%. Last quarter 83% of Canterbury smokers in primary care were given this advice, showing clear progress in this area,” David Meates said.

The Canterbury DHB also exceeded the Health target for elective surgeries, delivering 17,714 elective surgeries.

You can Download the latest results here.

How Canterbury DHB performed:

Shorter stays in emergency departments
Target: 95%
Canterbury: 96%

Improved access to elective surgery
Target: 17,484
Canterbury: year to date 17,714 or 101.3% of target

Faster cancer treatment
Target: 85%
Canterbury: 73%

Increased immunisation
Target: 95%
Canterbury: 94.7%

Better help for smokers to quit
Target: 95% (hospitalised patients) 90% (primary care)
Canterbury: 96% (hospital), 88.9% (primary care)

More heart and diabetes checks
Target: 90%
Canterbury: 82%

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