Minister of Health Tony Ryall
Health Minister Tony Ryall is defending his "slimmed
down" set of targets for district health boards and says he
inherited a system bogged down by bureaucracy.
Mr Ryall has announced three hospital targets and three
preventative programme targets.
Hospitals must try to cut emergency department waiting times,
deliver faster treatment for cancer patients and carry out
more elective surgery.
The priority preventative programmes are immunisation,
smoking and diabetes.
Labour's health spokeswoman, Ruth Dyson, said it seemed
inevitable that services would suffer.
"The minister clearly does not believe mental health
services, improving the oral health of our children and
improving family nutrition are important," she said.
"His statement conveniently avoids mentioning the names of
services that DHBs will no longer be required to target."
Mr Ryall said the previous government left him with 13 health
priorities, 61 objectives, 10 health targets measured through
18 indicators, 25 other indicators of DHB performance and
four hospital benchmark indicators assessed through 15
measures.
"We've had far too many indicators and committees and targets
for the last nine years," he said.
"This is part of the Government's plan to reduce
administrative monitoring and reporting requirements on DHBs
by a third."
Mr Ryall said the new set of targets did not mean areas like
mental health were being ignored.
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