Bay health board stays ahead of govt targets

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman

Hawke's Bay's District Health Board is ahead of national Government health targets.

Quarterly results released this week showed positive progress, with Health Minister Jonathan Coleman putting the success down to dedicated local healthcare professionals.

Health boards throughout New Zealand have been placing more emphasis on reducing wait times for elective first specialist assessments and treatment, such as hip replacements.

"Hawke's Bay delivered a high number of elective surgeries - meeting the 100 per cent target," Mr Coleman said.

It also performed well in other areas with immunisation coverage for children showing a 2 per cent rise to 96 per cent, while the same percentage of smokers were offered advice or support to quit.

For the first time results were also reported on a new, faster cancer treatment target that aims to see 85 per cent of patients with cancer diagnosis receiving their first treatment within 62 days of referral by July 2016.

Hawke's Bay was tracking well showing 63 per cent of patients fell within that timeframe.

HBDHB chief executive Kevin Snee said priority projects within the hospital were starting to make an impact.

"It hasn't been simply a matter of doing things differently it's taken cultural and transformational change to the way we do things " and we are beginning to see the benefits of that," he said.

Patients and the wider community saw improved immunisation rates and more people were having heart and diabetes checks than ever before.

Collaboration and support from clinicians and a strong partnership with Health Hawke's Bay had been vital in implementing change.

"We will only ever be able to meet the demand on our hospitals and specialist services if we work hard towards improving the wellbeing of our community.

"There is still much to be done to improve our smoking rates as it remains the single most important cause of preventable ill health and premature death, but we are making, albeit small, inroads and we will all benefit from those."