A long-awaited project to build a nationwide health IT system is still a long way away, despite calls from clinicians that it would be a major improvement for the sector.
Te Whatu Ora chief executive Margie Apa said work was underway on bringing the disparate regional health systems together, but it’s a highly complex job.
“We need to do the work on what it would take to go from what we have today – over 6000 applications in our system – to unify that to one,” said Apa.
“We have spent this past year in the process of discovery and due diligence of what we have actually got in the system, and we have over 1500 projects that we just need to simplify.”
“Some regions have got a clinical portal working well – better than others – and we want to make it more national and consistent.”
Apa declined to give a fixed timeline, but said one unified IT model being looked at by Health NZ is the Canadian state of Alberta, which took “three to four years” to bring together.
Apa said the biggest tangible improvement of the new Te Whatu Ora system so far was being able to invest in the workforce by pooling resources, in a way that previously wasn’t possible under the DHB model.
“We’re also seeing some early signs of what bringing together those services can achieve,” said Apa.
As an example, she said there are “signs of our hospital teams working together across regions”.
“We’re seeing national teams supporting cancer and cardiac services to tackle those wait times.”
Today marks one year since the largest shake up of health care services in New Zealand. (Source: 1News)
She noted that 300 people who live in either Christchurch or Dunedin were able to be seen instead at Timaru Hospital.
“That would not have happened in the last environment without a lot of haggling over funding.”
In the last year, wait lists for both surgury and first specialist appointments have increased significantly.
Apa said “it’s difficult to stay on top of waitlists when we have such huge workforce shortages”, saying many working in the sector are sending concerns on that up the chain.
Q+A is public interest journalism funded by NZ on Air
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