"As this comes at a cost of considerable time, I have agreed to a six-month trial to see how many people bother to read those 100-page reports, and then we'll make a decision on whether we commit the resources to redacting each one of them."
If people do read the reports and the new system continues beyond the six-month trial, it represents a significant step towards a system operated by Medicare in the United States which enables people to find nursing homes in any location and compare them on a star rating scale under several headings.
Another key component of the US rating system, known as the International Resident Assessment Instrument ("InterRAI"), is also being implemented in New Zealand rest homes and will be mandatory by 2015.
Mrs Goodhew said the InterRAI data would be used to look for "outliers" where particular rest homes had much higher rates of falls, pressure sores and other indicators of poor care, but she had no plans to develop US-style star ratings.
"We think if anyone wants to know how well a facility is rated, then they should look at our audits online," she said.
She said she would be happy to discuss a star rating system with clinicians who have suggested it, but they had not talked to her about it.
