The Government has released New Zealand’s first Government Policy Statement on Health.
The is the public statement of what Government expects the health system to deliver and achieve, and how success will be measured, monitored, and reported.
The GPS outlines the Government’s vision for the health system: to increase life expectancy with quality of life, and a health system that provides all New Zealanders with timely access to quality health care.
The GPS sets the direction for the health system as a whole and incorporates the Government’s priorities. It sets the expectations for health entities to make sure they are working towards common goals that matter for New Zealanders.
The GPS outlines five priorities for the New Zealand health system and the Government’s expectations for each of these areas.
These priority areas are:
- Access – ensuring that every person regardless of where they live in New Zealand, has equitable access to the health care services they need.
- Timeliness – making sure all New Zealanders can access these services in a prompt and efficient way.
- Quality – ensuring New Zealander’s health care and services are safe, easy to navigate, understandable and welcoming to users, and are continuously improving.
- Workforce – having a skilled and culturally capable workforce who are accessible, responsive, and supported to deliver safe and effective health care.
- Infrastructure – ensuring the health system is resilient and has the digital and physical infrastructure it needs to meet people’s needs now and in the future.
The GPS also outlines the Minister for Mental Health’s priorities for mental health, addiction and suicide prevention. These align strongly with the overall health system priorities.
The GPS also highlights the need to prevent and reduce the impact of five non-communicable diseases: cancer, diabetes, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and mental health. Together, these account for about 80 percent of deaths from non-communicable diseases in New Zealand.
To better prevent these non-communicable diseases, the health system needs to address 5 modifiable risk factors: alcohol, tobacco, poor nutrition, physical inactivity and adverse social and environmental factors.
The GPS also includes a monitoring framework and measures, which the Ministry of Health will report on every year.
