HEALTH SYSTEM REFORM
The government has announced sweeping reforms of New Zealand’s health and disability system, scrapping all 20 DHBs and replacing them with a “truly national health service”. In announcing the reforms, Minister of Health Andrew Little said New Zealand needs a smarter health system and to deliver on its promise to provide people with better access to services, closer to home, using digital options. A new Crown entity, Health New Zealand, will “be able to plan for things like IT systems that talk to each other”, he said. “With appropriate safeguards in place, you should be able to turn up anywhere in the health system and know that the health professional seeing you has access to relevant health information about you,” said the Minister. Lloyd McCann, a member of the expert review panel that worked on the Health and Disability System Review, described the plan as, “bold and ambitious, but absolutely the right direction of travel”.
He said data and digital will be a key enabler of the reforms and
interoperability and standardisation will drive the necessary information sharing at a regional and national level. Tony Wai, board member of NZHIT, said the industry body welcomes news of the reforms as there is an, “understanding that there needs to be more interoperability and standards of delivery that can be more agile, and services needs to be provided in a more consumer-centric way.” The new structure is expected to be in place around July 2022.
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