Health & Independence Report 2007 released

The health sector is producing key improvements in New Zealanders' health and life expectancy, the latest Health and Independence Report shows.

The Health and Independence Report 2007 contains Health Minister Pete Hodgson's report on progress on the New Zealand Health Strategy and implementing the Quality Improvement Strategy. It also includes the Director General's annual report on the state of public health.

The report presents data from 39 "headline indicators" of health system performance such as life expectancy, use of primary health care, immunisation coverage and cancer survival. It assesses whether the health sector is making progress towards important goals such as better health for all New Zealanders.

For the first time symbols are being used to provide a snapshot of the progress made. These symbols - which include ticks and crosses - are based on the overall trend of performance, including whether inequalities between ethnic groups have reduced.

"The report shows there are plenty of positives. Youth smoking continues to drop, District Health Boards are meeting their increased elective volumes and overall New Zealanders' life expectancy has improved,’’says Director General Stephen McKernan.

“More resources are being targeted at detecting and treating people with chronic disease. We now have about 94,000 people enrolled in Care Plus - a co-ordinated care programme for PHO enrollees with multiple chronic conditions and in 2006 more than 80,000 people had a free annual check up as part of the Diabetes Get Checked programme.”

“At the same time we are seeing improvements in priority areas; for example, a reduction in deaths due to cardiovascular disease.”

Mr McKernan says these improvements could not be achieved without the dedicated work of the country's health workforce.

"But there's still work to do to stem the rising rates of obesity and diabetes, which are growing causes of ill health and premature death in New Zealand. Our childhood immunisation coverage is improving but remains too low, especially for those groups at risk of poorer health status, such as Maori and Pacific children.''

This year Health Minister Pete Hodgson launched a set of ten Health Targets aimed at supporting the achievement of the Government's 13 population health objectives. The Ministry will be working with District Health Boards to focus improvements on priority areas such as immunisation, improving diabetes and elective services, reducing obesity and reducing cancer waiting times.

"These targets are designed to challenge the health system as a whole to do better. Reducing inequalities for those groups that currently have worse health status than other New Zealanders is a key measure of success for the Health Targets,’’ Mr McKernan says.

Ends

For a copy of the report go to: www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/indexmh/health-independence-report-2007




Key Highlights

The health system is broad and diverse, touching the lives of many New Zealanders in a variety of ways. For example, in the past year, 2006/07:

17.3 million visits were made to general practitioners and nurses in Primary Health Organisations (PHOs)
46.4 million prescription items were dispensed
23.2 million laboratory tests were performed
91,092 people accessed mental health services
418,332 cervical smears were taken
440,392 free influenza vaccinations were given
74,902 free annual checks for people with diabetes were undertaken
1.69 million personal care and home management hours provided for older people
20,211 ‘green’ prescriptions (advice on exercise or nutrition) were dispensed
681,102 hospital discharges for medical and surgical services occurred.

A snapshot of key findings:

Primary Care
Sixty-nine percent of primary care doctors reported that almost all of their patients (more than 80 percent) could obtain a same-day or next-day appointment when they needed one. Only 52 percent of Australian and 23 percent of Canadian primary care doctors reported providing similar access to the majority of their patients.

Cancer
Cancer survival is a key outcome measure of cancer control and provides useful insights into the effectiveness of health care in detecting and treating cancer. The five-year relative survival rate has increased for the five major cancer sites (breast, cervical, lung, prostate and colorectal). In particular there have been notable increases in five-year survival rates for prostate cancer and breast cancer.

Life expectancy
Overall New Zealanders' life expectancy continues to improve. A newborn girl can expect to live, on average, 81.9 years and a newborn boy 77.9 years. This represents a gain since 1995-97 of 2.2 years for females and 3.5 years for males.

Smoking
The Year 10 Smoking Survey found the daily smoking prevalence in Year 10 students (14 and15-year-olds) dropped from 17.1 percent to 10.1 percent in girls and from 14.1 percent to 6.2 percent in boys over 1999–2006.

Electives
Since 2001/02 elective service volumes (adjusted for relative resources used i.e case weighted discharges) have increased 12.5 per cent. In the last year, elective service volumes have increased by more than 5 percent.

National Drug Policy
Recent achievements related to the New Zealand Health Strategy include the March 2007 launch of the new National Drug Policy 2007-2012 (Ministerial Committee on Drug Policy 2007) with a goal to prevent and reduce the health, social and economic harms that are linked to tobacco, alcohol, illegal and other drug use.

New Violence Intervention Programme
In August 2007 new guidelines for the Violence Intervention Programme were launched. These aim to ensure that victims of violence, who use health services receive the support they require and that staff are trained and competent to screen patients who may be victims of child and partner abuse. To date more than 4500 health professionals have been trained in family violence intervention, the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society has screened 29,200 new mothers for violence and made 600 referrals, and in the past year 500 general practitioners and midwives have been trained in family violence prevention.