Coleman - Otago University Health Systems Centre Opening
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman
Associate Minister of
Health
1 September 2011
Speech notes
Opening of Otago University’s Centre of Performance Measurement and Management and Centre for Health Systems.
Good morning and thank you for inviting me to address the Centre of Performance Measurement and Management’s inaugural event. It’s good to see you and the Centre for Health Systems jointly looking at improving health system performance. I look forward to hearing the outcomes of having the ‘bean counters’ and the ‘improvers’ in the same room.
I would like to acknowledge the Directors of your two units, Professor Ralph Adler from the Centre of Performance Measurement and Management and Associate Professor Robin Gauld from the Centre for Health Systems.
Your symposium offers an ideal opportunity this morning for me to cover the steps the Government has taken to improve New Zealand’s health system and the various initiatives introduced to monitor and drive performance across the system, especially across the DHBs.
Ministerial Review
Group
This Government is committed to growing and protecting the public health service. On the recommendation of the Government’s Ministerial Review Group (MRG) we have folded multiple agencies and committees and other entities into several central agencies to better develop and service the health sector.
Most recently we established the independent Health Quality and Safety Commission to lead quality and safety improvements in the sector. The MRG reported evidence of substantial human and financial costs associated with medical errors, the potential to get much better value from the public health dollar and improved health outcomes and experience of care.
The Commission’s work is strongly focussed on introducing systems and processes to ensure the safest and highest quality care and using proven innovation.
To progress this work, the Commission will develop a set of baseline quality and safety measures and indicators to cover the wider health system, including public, private, NGO, primary care, hospital, aged care, mental health and disability support sectors. This information will allow the Commission to report on unwarranted variation in health care outcomes and practices in New Zealand. Health care variation reporting is a powerful tool for improving appropriateness of care. The identification of variance, and open debate about its causes, will ensure that quality care leading to health outcomes is available for all populations in New Zealand.
Importantly, the Commission will also provide advice to the Minister of Health to drive improvement in safety and quality in health care. Improving the quality of care will provide better value for money and more efficient and effective use of taxpayers funding which is vital.
When we came into office three years ago we were very clear on what the public wanted from the health service – they wanted it to be efficient, convenient and led by clinicians. They expected us to deliver high quality health care and to get better value for their tax dollars, despite the challenging global financial situation.
Investment in Health
The global financial situation is having a real impact on health care in most countries. Despite the serious economic environment, this Government will have invested an additional $1.5 billion of new resources into health in its first three years.
Budget 2011 acknowledged the importance of protecting and growing our public health services and delivered an extra $2.2 billion to public health services over the next four years, including an additional $585 million in initiatives in 2011/12.
Of that, $420 million is new
money, plus around $165 million from savings going straight
back into health care.
Some of the key initiatives being
funded by the $2.2 billion over four years include:
•
$80 million for widened access to medicines. It is expected
around 32,000 patients in the first year will benefit from
this extra funding.
• $68 million for more
elective surgery, continuing the record increase of 4,000
extra operations a year, and reducing waiting times.
•
A further $54.5 million for maternity initiatives to improve
safety and quality and extra WellChild visits with a
particular focus on first time mothers.
• $40
million for mental health, plus another $4 million for
dementia-related respite care.
• $80 million
extra from DHBs for GP visit subsidies and $14 million for
more people qualifying in programmes such as very low cost
access and free under sixes.
• $18 million for
40 extra medical training places – part of the
Government’s promise to boost the number of medical
training places by 200 over five years.
• $94
million more for GP subsidies over 4 years.
The Budget also invests in combating rheumatic fever which has been a health priority since 2001. A $12 million dollar investment in the budget this year will support a huge campaign across high prevalence communities involving school based sore throat clinics for over 22,000 children.
But new money has not been our only contribution. Over the past three years we have also driven a system change involving a change in thinking and in service delivery. This is needed to manage the growing demands on the system.
Clinical
Leadership
Clinical leadership is crucial to these changes. An ageing population, new technology and medicine, and rising costs are putting huge pressure on health services. To help meet these challenges we need to work smarter and differently. That includes a focus on clinical leadership and integration. We need to move health services to where they are convenient for patients, and closer to homes and communities.
Clinical leadership and integration are also pivotal to the future delivery of patient-centred care. The nine Health Care Alliances - partnerships between DHBs and the primary health care sector – help local hospital and community clinicians to collaborate better. These initiatives have been driven by good innovation from the ground up. We are seeing more clinical pathways, more direct referral for diagnostics and more hospital specialists working with GPs in the community.
The establishment of integrated family health centres (IFHCs), where various health providers work closely together, is progressing. IFHCs house primary health care services such as GPs, physiotherapists, pharmacists, facilities for minor surgery and x-rays, and in some places, provide for overnight care. IFHCs bridge the traditional gap between primary health care and hospitals, making full use of the primary health care sector’s training and knowledge. It also helps to prevent expensive and time consuming hospital admissions.
Growing the Health
Workforce
We have also been growing and protecting our health workforce. Under Professor Des Gorman’s leadership, Health Workforce New Zealand is working with clinicians to explore how the health service might respond to a doubling of demand over the next 10 years, within a constrained funding environment.
As I mentioned earlier, $18 million has been invested in an additional 40 medical school places to increase the number of medical places. When those students graduate, the voluntary bonding scheme we introduced offers them student-loan write-offs in return for working in hard to staff areas or specialities. There are over 1800 young doctors, nurses and midwives signed up to the scheme.
There are now more doctors and nurses employed in the public health service than ever before – with over 800 extra doctors and 1,500 extra nurses employed by DHBs.
Information Technology
For a health system to work well, it needs the right infrastructure, especially in IT. The National IT Health Board, recommended by the MRG, aims to have electronic access to health information for all New Zealanders by 2014. In addition they plan to have secure electronic access to patients’ full health information for all health professionals caring for a person.
Information technology plays a crucial role in ensuring our health system offers the best possible care in a timely way. Many health care organisations are already making good use of technology systems and the National Health IT Board is working to ensure these proven systems are shared regionally and nationally. We want to share good ideas and make the best use of solutions that are already in use so we do not reinvent the wheel. Some examples are:
1. A new electronic system – GP2GP – which means a person’s medical records can be transferred immediately if they change doctors.
2. In the three metro Auckland DHBs, a patient’s current and past laboratory test results are now available in one place thanks to TestSafe, a confidential online information service.
3. A partnership between East Tamaki HealthCare and Middlemore Hospital’s emergency department that allows ED staff to access information about patients enrolled in 13 South Auckland primary health care clinics – including their current medications, health conditions, allergies, immunisations and recent visits to the doctor.
Auckland DHB is piloting a cardiac health project which collects information on patients’ care at specific points to chart the effectiveness of cardiac services. Long term, this will enable the cardiac services around New Zealand to be measured against each other and against Australian cardiac services.
Following the implementation of the National Quality and Safety Programme for Maternity Services, we are rebuilding the Maternity datamart. This rebuild will increase the accuracy of data collected including home birth reports in order to provide better quality information to assist in the future improvements of maternity services.
Regionalisation
A much stronger regional approach to the planning and delivery of health services by DHBs is essential if we are going to meet increasing demands for health services within the funding available.
Regionalisation was one of the key ‘missing links’ that the MRG identified in the public health system. Under the Public Health & Disability Amendment Act 2010 DHBs are required to start planning at a regional level – co-operating, sharing resources and jointly planning to develop affordable and clinically sustainable regional health service arrangements.
DHBs have been asked to focus on:
• A small number
of high priorities and the most vulnerable services in each
region
• Development of shared back office functions
across DHBs, and
• Regionalisation of IT platforms, IT
support and workforce development.
Health
Targets
The Health Targets are a set of national performance measures specifically designed to improve the performance of health services and provide a focus for action. There are currently six health targets with each reflecting a priority health area for the Government.
1. Shorter stays in
emergency departments – 95% of patients are seen and
treated within six hours
2. Shorter waits for
cancer treatment – patients needing radiation treatment
receive it within four weeks
3. Increased
immunisation
4. Improved access to elective
surgery
5. Better help for smokers to
quit
6. Better diabetes and cardiovascular
services
The results have been immediate and successful, even internationally significant. We gave firm, streamlined health targets to the organisations that run our hospitals and who fund primary care – our District Health Boards.
Their performance against those targets are published in a league table in the national press four times a year. There is nothing like competition and sunlight to galvanise action and improve results.
The latest
results released on Tuesday by Health Minister Tony Ryall
show we are continuing to make good progress.
For the
final quarter of the 2010/11 year, record numbers of kiwi
patients are accessing elective surgery, with DHBs
delivering more than 145,000 elective surgery discharges in
the last financial year - 26,000 more than three years ago.
500 extra patients a week are now getting elective
surgery.
Other highlights in the latest results
are:
• A record 90 per cent of two year olds
are now immunized, which is up from only 73% three years
ago.
• All cancer patients ready for radiation
treatment started treatment within four weeks except at the
Christchurch cancer centre where one patient waited three
days longer than target as a result of earthquakes.
•
92% of emergency department patients were admitted,
discharged or transferred within six hours. 14 DHBs are now
over 90%. This includes Waitemata DHB's North Shore
Hospital...that was at 61% only 2 years ago. All evidence
shows better treatment and recovery for patients seen sooner
in EDs.
• 85% of smokers were offered support
to quit smoking, compared with 74% in quarter three. Lakes
DHB becomes the first to hit 100% in this preventive health
target.
The composite target for better diabetes and
cardiovascular services is down 1 per cent to 72 percent.
However the general trend is improving.
DHB
Performance
DHB performance is monitored to ensure that DHBs deliver on both legislative requirements and Government priorities. The non-financial monitoring arrangements, which consist of a balanced and focussed range of key performance indicators that provide qualitative and quantitative information on DHB performance, are part of the wider accountability framework.
This framework is reviewed annually to ensure that the indicators accurately reflect the Government’s priorities and measure system performance.
The evolution of this framework reflects an increasing focus on productivity and value for money. With a $9 billion investment it is important that we clearly see the performance of DHB provider arms.
Conclusion
Over the last three years, the Government has shown the
determination to grow and protect the public health service.
There has been some real progress made towards
improving services for patients, tackling the workforce
crisis, and strengthening clinical leadership.
But we still have more work to do to get a patient-centred, high quality and affordable health service.
Further progress needs partnerships; between primary and secondary health care services, between patients and their clinicians and between academics, clinicians, politicians and administrators.
I see this inaugural symposium as a very useful beginning to what should be an ongoing dialogue between all parties on ‘improving health system performance’.
Thank you.
ENDS