In an update in October 2008 David Cunliffe, who was the health minister by then, said: "Although there is always room for further gains, the results released today show a continued overall improvement in health outcomes for New Zealanders".
When National entered government in 2008, it cut the targets from 10 to six - dropping goals for mental health, oral health and nutrition and physical exercise.
It kept five of Labour's targets - elective surgery, cancer treatment, immunisation, smoking, and heart and diabetes checks. It also added a new target of cutting emergency department waiting times.
Speaking to reporters earlier today, Clark said some of the targets had had little effect and were "derided" by many clinicians.
"We want to have a more transparent system that ensures that the incentives are lined up for every tax dollar that's spent in the health system to be spent effectively."
National leader Simon Bridges warned that more preventable deaths would result from dropping the targets.
"Over time dropping the targets, losing the accountability, will mean more illnesses and more fatalities in our health system that could have been avoided," he told reporters.
Ian Powell, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said that was not true.
"That's crap. The obsessional nature of certain targets has contributed to some patients going blind," he said.
Powell said the targets had not worked.
"They have led to superficial assessments of how the system has performed, they grossly mislead the public and they have had, especially in the context of underfunding, very perverse outcomes.
"The [Health] Minister, and we would agree with him, is looking more towards things that focus more on improved health outcomes," he said.
Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters said National Health Targets had been a "miserable failure".
"It's not correct to say we've dropped health targets. I just think those health targets were such a miserable failure that we have to find something that works and that's better," Peters told reporters this morning.
National claimed the Government had also stopped reporting on the National Patient Flow project which had been underway since July 2014 and aimed to improve DHBs' referral systems, administration processes and communications with patients to better understand patient outcomes and unmet need.
Ministry of Health spokeswoman Jessica Smaling said the most recent publication on May 14 2018 was for referrals received between October 2016 and September 2017.
""The next release is planned for August 2018 with data covering the period of 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2017," she said.
