The power of performance reporting

Florence Nightingale once said “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This is as true today of our health care systems as it was 130 years ago.

Last year Minister of Health Tony Ryall introduced a simple performance reporting system for our DHBs. They are required to report every three months against the Government’s six priority areas for health:

- Shorter stays in ED;
- Improved access to elective surgery;
- Shorter waits for cancer treatment;
- Increased childhood immunisation rates;
- Better help for smokers to quit; and
- Better diabetes and cardiovascular services.

It’s been amazing to watch how simply setting an achievable target and asking DHBs to report to their communities about how they are going against those targets has resulted in improvements.

In Otago and Southland the improvement between the second and third quarters of last year in five of those six target areas was very encouraging. Southland has also shown improvement in a number of areas. I expect the new Southern DHB will continue that focus on these priority areas.