National health service to deliver interoperable IT systems

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

The government’s sweeping reforms of New Zealand’s health and disability system will encourage innovation and integration and ensure patient information is shared across the country, Health Minister Andrew Little says.

Andrew Little announced on April 21 that the government is scrapping all 20 District Health Boards and replacing them with a “truly national health service”.

The country’s hospitals and commissioning primary and community health services will be run by a new Crown entity, Health New Zealand (Health NZ).

This single entity will, “be able to plan for things like IT systems that talk to each other”, he said.

Little described use of technology in health is as “an area long overdue for attention”.

He 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.

“Consumers have repeatedly asked for the ability to use modern technology, such as virtual diagnostic tests at home, the ability to book doctors’ appointments online and digital monitoring of health conditions,” he said.

“To put it plainly, successive governments have failed to deliver on this.

“With a truly national health service, we can deliver on this promise, setting common standards and improving access, while tailoring services to meet local needs and cutting unnecessary trips to hospitals and clinics.”

Little envisioned a future where, “services will be integrated and linked, so people don’t have to share the same information time and time again, and will find it easier to get support from different parts of the health system.

“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,” he said.
Little said Health NZ will drive improvement and innovation and allow the government to, “start investing in and building the workforce we need for the future”.

Health NZ will operate on the basis of four regions with district offices throughout the country, to “ensure it is truly in touch with the needs of all New Zealanders”.

A new Māori Health Authority will support the Ministry in shaping system policy and strategy to ensure performance for Māori, and will work in partnership with Health NZ to commission care across New Zealand.

“This is not just about replacing 20 separate systems with one – it is about building a system that genuinely operates in a national way,” Little said.

The next 18 months is the ‘preparation and transition phase’ with the new structure formally in place around July 2022.

Lloyd McCann, a member of the expert review panel that worked on the Health and Disability System Review, describes the reforms as, “bold and ambitious, but absolutely the right direction of travel”.

He is pleased that the Minister’s announcement demonstrates an evolution of the thinking from the report’s recommendations.

“That’s right because we have had the experience of Covid-19 in the intervening months, so the context has already changed and we need to continually adapt and evolve our approach,” he says.

The announcements “back the direction of travel of Shayne Hunter (deputy director data and digital) and his team” as they work towards creating a national Health Information Platform, says McCann.

He says a truly integrated single system backed by data and digital as an enabler makes absolute sense and puts further impetus behind the need for continued investment in this space.

Tony Wai, board member of NZHIT, says the announcements align with the industry body's recently released report Hauora, Mauri Ora: Enabling a Healthier Aotearoa New Zealand.

"There's 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," he says.

Samantha Murton, president of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, says “hearing about technological advancements and providing people access to community health care regardless of where they live in New Zealand is something we’ve strived for.

"General practice showed itself during 2020’s Covid-19 response to be a nimble, responsive workforce when we switched 1000 practices to a remote consultation module in two days.

"We’ve done it before and we’re ready to forge ahead, adapt, and bring even better access to health care in a faster, more efficient model that is supported by Government," she says.