Media release from Southland District Health Board

Southland District Health Board (DHB) continued to make steady progress in the government's key priority health target areas during the second quarter of 2009/10.

Each of the 2009/10 health targets reflects a priority health area for the government.  The targets focus on improving the health sector's performance, and ensuring our health and disability system is contributing to maintaining and improving health outcomes in these important areas.

For the Minister of Health's hospital performance focused targets, Southland DHB ranked top DHB in the country for improved access to elective surgery, achieving 114% year to date against a target of 100%.

These results are reflective of the dedicated staff at Southland hospital who go the extra mile to balance the demands of acute service delivery with the need to deliver on elective targets for the Southland community. The DHB also maintained its position of 1st equal for shorter waits for cancer treatment radiotherapy.

Southland DHB also made significant gains in the areas focusing on preventative measures, which include increased immunisation, better help for smokers to quit and better diabetes and cardiovascular services.

The amount of hospitalised smokers being provided with help and advice to quit rose 11% in the second quarter, from 27% in September 2009 to 38% in December 2009. The aim is for 80% to be offered this support by July 2010.  

Southland DHB Chief Operating Officer Lexie O'Shea said all DHB staff should feel proud of these results. She said she was especially satisfied to see the significant amount of work staff had devoted to smoking cessation support was paying off.

"To achieve an 11% rise in just three months is really commendable."  

Southland was again one of the top three DHBs for the amount of immunisation coverage for children turning two years old. The DHB exceeded the target of 85% of two year olds being immunised by 5%.

Southland also achieved a 5% improvement since the last quarter for diabetes and cardiovascular services/condition management, achieving 69%.  

Regional General Manager (Planning and Funding) David Chrisp said it was pleasing to see the primary care sector (GP Practices) was achieving gains in this area.

"Quarter one was the first time we had gathered information for this target, therefore it was the first time we had a baseline figure for comparison."  

Southland DHB's results for 'shorter stays in emergency departments' appeared to have declined significantly in quarter two, however Chief Operating Officer Lexie O'Shea says this was due to an error with data collection in the first quarter rather than a change in services.

"There was some confusion around data collection which led us to discover the department actually achieved a result of 82.74 in quarter one, rather than 96% as previously reported.  

"Therefore in this reporting round it looks as if we have had a decline of ED presentations being admitted, discharged or transferred from the ED within six hours since September, but this isn't the case. We achieved 82% in quarter two, which means we have decline of 0.74%.

"We are making every effort to reach the Ministry target and several hospital wide projects are currently being worked on to improve this result."