Media release from Canterbury District Health Board

Improved access to elective surgery is one of the areas in which Canterbury District Health Board has excelled in the 2009/10 End of Year Health Target results.

The Health Targets are national health performance measures, set by the Ministry of Health ( MoH), which are designed to improve the performance of our health services and provide a focus for action for DHBs.

In the end of year results published today Canterbury exceeded the MoH target for Improved Access to Elective Surgery. This year 15,636 Canterbury people had elective surgery, an increase of 18.1% on 2008/2009. The CDHB also delivered $10.1 million worth of elective surgery to people from other DHBs in the last year.

CDHB CEO David Meates says CDHB has put considerable work into getting the health system working in the most efficient way.

"In all six targets CDHB has improved on the previous quarter's results but while we have performed well, there is still some work to do."

Increased immunisation for two-year olds was another highlight in CDHB's results.

Eighty-nine percent of all two year olds were immunised in 2009/10 which surpassed the target by four percent. This is an increase of seven percent, or 375 children, on last year's figures.

"Improvement in this area reflects the efforts that primary care providers and the outreach immunisation service are making to ensure all two year olds have the opportunity to be fully immunised," Mr Meates said.
There is ongoing improvement in this area with the most recent results showing 91% of two year olds were immunised in Quarter 4 including high numbers of Maori, (87%) and Pacific, (89%) children.

Despite recent record numbers of people attending Christchurch Hospital's Emergency Department, the ED improved on its previous result for Shorter Stays in Emergency Departments. The target is for 95% of patients to be admitted, discharged or transferred from an Emergency Department within six hours. Canterbury's ED reached 92%. This year 87,091 people attended the ED - an increase of 9.8% or 7,774 more than last year.

Strategies are in place to reduce the wait time for patients including a nurse-led telephone triage system being implemented in General Practice in Canterbury, improved access to radiology, an increase in General Medicine beds at the hospital and helping people to avoid hospital admissions through services in primary care, St John's and Non Government Organisations.

While CDHB is not shown to have met the Shorter waits for Cancer Therapy
Radiotherapy target, this target has been achieved and maintained for the last four weeks and last week reached the point that 100 per cent of people were being treated within four weeks. The current target is for people to have radiation therapy within six weeks of their first specialist assessment. This will become four weeks by December 2010.

Maintaining this new target will be assisted by a fourth Linear Accelerator ( Linac) machine which was approved by Canterbury District Health Board at its last meeting.

Linac machines provide radiation treatment for the cure or long-term local control of cancer and for controlling symptoms.

This new linac is expected to be operational in the second half of 2011 and is in addition to a $10 million upgrade of the Canterbury Oncology service to help meet the steady growth in demand for radiotherapy.

CDHB also expects the next quarter results to reflect improved results for the Better Diabetes and Cardiovascular Services target. This follows a review that identified that care has been occurring in the community but has not always been well recorded.

Nearly 10,000 Canterbury people had annual diabetes reviews in the last year. In future this information will be better reflected in improved target results. More than three quarters of the people who had an annual diabetes review reported satisfactory or better diabetes management.

The CDHB is steadily improving in the Better Help for Smokers to Quit target. The percentage of hospitalised smokers that are being provided with advice and help to quit was 67% in June and 74% in July. The target was for 80% of hospitalised smokers to be provided with advice and help to quit by July 2010. The figures for August are tracking even higher for Canterbury as a result of further initiatives being put in place. This year 5,480 hospitalised smokers received support and advice to
quit.