Hawke's Bay District Health BoardFriday 21 May 2010, 9:27AM
Media release from Hawke's Bay District Health
Board
Work on improving wait times in Hawke's Bay Hospital's Emergency
Department, helping smokers quit and elective surgery wait times
has seen the DHB work its way up the health target ladder.
These improved service performance results have come at the same
time as the DHB has also bettered its financial performance and
exceeded its financial target for the year to date.
Third quarter results of the governments health targets, released
yesterday, showed an improvement in most of the targets except in
increasing immunisation for two year olds where the DHB achieved 90
percent, down from 91 percent, but well above the 85 percent
target.
This quarter the DHB had climbed to 89 percent of the ED target up
from 78 percent the previous quarter - of patients assessed,
treated and admitted or discharged within six hours.
The Shorter Stays in Emergency Departments target is six hours for
95 percent of patients.
Chief executive Kevin Snee said while the result showed an upward
trend but there was still work to be done to hit the 95 percent
target.
"Staff should be pleased and proud of the work they have done to
improve efficiencies throughout the hospital.
"It's a steady improvement and means a much better outcome for
patients in Hawke's Bay who need emergency treatment," Dr Snee
said.
Helping smokers help to quit has also shown a steady improvement up
from 32 percent last quarter to 57 percent.
The target of providing better help for hospitalised smokers to
quit is 80 percent.
"This is going to be a key area of focus for the DHB -while we may
not see the direct benefits of smokers quitting yet - the long term
gains of helping smokers will benefit the whole community in the
long run," he said.
Improved access to Elective Surgery has also improved up from 85
percent to 96 percent and just short of the 100 percent
target.
Dr Snee said the health targets were a key focus of the DHB -
however they weren't the pinnacle - and each target should be seen
as the starting point not the ultimate goal.