Health Targets: 2009/10 - 3rd Quarter
For the 2009/10 financial year there are six priority targets published every three months nationally and regionally by the Ministry of Health and DHBs. The targets are published via local newspapers and DHB websites.
MidCentral DHB Health Targets
The MidCentral DHB 2009/10 3rd Quarter Health Target report is available to download (135KB PDF).
Previous quarterly reports are also available.
MidCentral District Health Board has made excellent progress toward achieving the Government’s six Health Targets over the past three months, further improving on four of the targets, maintaining its 100% target for cancer treatment, and retaining its third ranking nationally for diabetes and cardiovascular services’ targets.
The Six Health Targets
Specific information about each individual health target is available:
The MidCentral DHB 2009/10 3rd Quarter Health Target report is available to download (135KB PDF).
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Shorter Stays in Emergency Departments:
Target - 95% of people presenting to the Emergency Department are admitted, discharged or transferred within six hours.
Improved result. During the quarter to end March 2010, 7806 patients presenting to the Emergency Department at Palmerston North Hospital were admitted, discharged or transferred within six hours – 423 more than in the previous quarter.
MidCentral Health achieved a rate of 80.5% for the quarter overall (78.1% for the December quarter). MidCentral Health continues to implement a number of initiatives throughout the hospital aimed at achieving this Health Target by the end of June 2010.
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Improved Access to Elective Surgery:
MidCentral DHB has a target of 5451 hospital discharges for elective surgery by the end of June 2010. A total of 1307 MidCentral residents had an elective surgical procedure performed – 11 more elective surgery discharges than last quarter, but 137 short of target in November and December 2009.
Referrals from MidCentral DHB to other DHBs for specialised tertiary level services such as cardiothoracic surgery and neurosurgery have been fewer than expected, which has contributed to the shortfall against target year-to-date.
There has also been an unexpected shortage of anaesthetists at MidCentral Health over this past quarter, which meant the planned number of surgical discharges had to be reduced.
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Shorter Waits for Cancer Treatment:
Target - by the end of July 2010, everyone needing radiation treatment will have it within six weeks.
Target achieved. All (100%) MidCentral residents needing radiotherapy received their treatment within six weeks of their specialist assessment during the third quarter; this result has been maintained over the last six months.
As a Cancer Centre, MidCentral treated 268 patients between January and the end of March within the expected timeframe. While there were some patients who elected to defer their treatment start dates for personal reasons, or who were having other clinical treatment at the time, no treatment delays occurred because of constraints on the Cancer Centre at Palmerston North Hospital.
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Increased Immunisation for two-year-olds:
Target - by July 2010, 85% of two-year-olds are fully immunised.
Target achieved. For the three months ending March 2010, 544 of the 619 (87.9%) eligible two-year-old children had been fully immunised in the MidCentral district.
The result reported for the second quarter was 82.3% (first quarter was 76%), so a great improvement has been seen over these past six months.
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Better Help for Smokers to Quit:
Target - by July 2010, 80% of hospitalised smokers will be provided with advice and help to quit.
mproved result. Of the 967 patients admitted to hospital who were identified as smokers during the quarter ending March 2010, 463 (47.7%) were offered advice and help to quit smoking. This is a big improvement on the 24.4% that was reported for the quarter ending December 2009. While there is still a long way to go toward achieving this target, MidCentral Health is implementing a number of initiatives aimed at increasing the rates of quit support offered to hospitalised smokers.
Such things as the “ABC Smoking Cessation Campaign” to provide training for staff, the “Ask about the Elephant” campaign to support staff to actually “ask the question” of patients, increasing access to subsidised nicotine replacement therapy, promoting direct referrals to the Quit Smoking Services and developing data collection methods have all been introduced in this last quarter.
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Better Diabetes and Cardiovascular Services:
Two of the three targets for this compilation measure continue to be met. The result reported for the quarter ending March 2010 continues to show an improvement in the numbers of people who are accessing their free annual checks for diabetes. Just over a quarter (27%, 1218) of the target number of people had their diabetes checks during this quarter and when combined with the previous six months MidCentral is expecting to achieve, if not exceed, the annual target of 62% of the estimated population who have diabetes. Of the 1218 who had their annual checks during this period, 75.6% had their diabetes in good control – although an improvement on the previous quarter, this result is not yet at the target of 78%.
Ensuring that people have their risk assessments for cardiovascular disease (CVD) completed is also going very well. The proportion of the eligible population who have had their laboratory tests for absolute CVD risk in the last five years increased to 82.9% – exceeding MidCentral’s target; a further improvement on the good results for the last quarter.
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Last Updated 06/09/2010