Now the Government won’t even tell us basic health stats

Radio NZ reports:

Publicly available health data on wait times for emergency departments, operations and cancer treatment are now six months out of date, since Te Whatu Ora was forced to pull inaccurate figures from its website.

That has caused disquiet among some clinicians and patient groups about what they say is the lack of transparency.

Association of Salaried Medical Specialists head Sarah Dalton said health data mattered because it underpinned core decisions about funding priorities and treatment for patients.

“There’s not clearly communicated ‘here we are, there’s our destination, here’s how we’re going to get there’, which is really critical, whether it’s emergency wait times, first specialist appointments, planned care, bed block, ramping – but also vacancy rates, which absolutely feed into those things.”

Before the Govt’s health reforms, this data was published regularly and reliably. Now we have no data to measure how well the health system is performing.

As an example on 28 March I asked Health NZ for some basic data on health outcomes. On 28 April they extended the request and it is now the 9th of June and still no data for the majority of my request.

Having timely and accurate data on government performance is critical for being able to make informed judgments. We deserve better.