June 2016: Public agencies collect and use some information well to help them support those affected by suicide and find ways to prevent it. For example, reliable and detailed mortality statistics are kept on suicides and there is a rapid advice system in place for coroners to tell district health boards about suspected suicides in their area.
June 2016: The Ministry’s progress in implementing national home-care quality indicators has been slow and it is currently working to produce a better set of indicators. The Ministry has strengthened infrastructure that should help it to better collect and use performance information to monitor the quality of home-care once national indicators are in place.
June 2016: We found that standard asset management practices, like knowing, monitoring and reporting on the condition and performance of assets and having integrated asset, service, and financial plans do not seem to be standard practice for more than half of DHBs. We also found that, since 2009, fewer than half of DHBs showed indicators of asset spending and building up money to pay for future assets at levels we think characterise good financial and asset management.
November 2015: Progress in responding to the Auditor-General's recommendation.
October 2015: We looked at the costs and benefits of HBL’s work in the health sector and identified 11 lessons that might benefit HBL’s successors and other shared services programmes. HBL's difficulties included an ambitious and complex programme, inadequate communication with DHBs, a lack of timely and accurate information for HBL’s board, and no overall project management. Some DHBs’ commitment to change appears to have been limited. From early 2014, HBL's board improved relationships with the health sector and the governance and management of change programmes...
November 2014: The report finds that ACC needs to make changes to its case management systems and processes to ensure that it is effectively meeting people’s needs. ACC needs to look at how it uses and captures information about effective treatment and rehabilitation options, its internal quality review and coaching tools, how it communicates with people, how adequate and appropriate its case management services are for long-term clients with complex needs, and how it manages the transfer of clients between it and other public entities...
15 August 2014
June 2014: This article describes the progress that has been made in responding to the Auditor-General's earlier recommendations...
June 2014: This article describes the progress that has been made in responding to the Auditor-General's earlier recommendations...
May 2014: This report describes the results of our 2012/13 audits of entities in the health sector and our recent performance audit work to assess the effectiveness of particular aspects of the public health system...
December 2013: This article summarises the progress that the Ministry of Health and district health boards have made in responding to the recommendations we made in 2011. Our 2011 report was about scheduled (or "elective") services (assessments and treatment)...
November 2013: This report looks at how well regional services planning is working in practice. The Ministry of Health and district health boards have put effort into creating the conditions for success, but regional services planning is not yet business as usual. Overall, we expected to see more tangible examples of services that were planned regionally rather than at a district level, and more evidence that the expected benefits were emerging ...
June 2013: We wanted to understand the public sector’s approach to combating child obesity, but the Ministry of Education and Sport New Zealand no longer focus on obesity to the extent they have in the past and the Ministry of Health was evaluating new ideas and approaches to combating obesity. These changing circumstances limited what my staff could usefully audit...
April 2013: ISBN 978-0-478-41017-4 (print), ISBN 978-0-478-41018 (online).
September 2012: We carried out a performance audit to assess the progress that the Ministry of Health and district health boards have made since we published our December 2009 report, Effectiveness of arrangements to check the standard of services provided by rest homes.
June 2012: In this paper, we discuss characteristics of annual reports that we consider are necessary for good accountability.
April 2012: Cleanest public sector in the world: Keeping fraud at bay.
March 2012: ISBN 978-0-478-38340-9 (print), ISBN 978-0-478-38341-6 (online).
February 2012: We carried out a performance audit that found that the Blood Service effectively supplies safe blood and blood products to patients in our health system...
July 2011: We carried out a performance audit to establish how effective the Ministry of Health and district health boards are in ensuring that, where appropriate, people aged 65 and over (older people) get the care and support they need to remain living independently at home...
June 2011: This report assesses progress made in achieving the government strategy "Reduced Waiting Times for Public Hospital Elective Services". There has been good progress over 10 years but there is more to do to ensure that patients are assessed in a nationally consistent way, and seen and treated in priority order...
Central government: Results of the 2009/10 audits (Volume 2).
February 2011: This document has been written to help district health boards (DHBs) as they prepare their 2011-14 and future Statements of Intent (SOIs)...
September 2010: This document has been prepared to help district health boards (DHBs) further improve the effectiveness of the Get Checked diabetes programme...
September 2010: This report provides examples of good practice that we encourage, and some examples of poor practice, to help DHBs improve their own spending on supplies and services from external suppliers and providers...
September 2010: All DHBs have after-hours services available for 95% of the population within 60 minutes' travel time. That said, most DHBs' plans could better consider affordability and transport barriers and the risks to those after-hours services continuing...
Central government: Results of the 2008/09 audits.
Central government: Results of the 2008/09 audits.
December 2009: The Ministry is actively trying to address shortcomings in the effectiveness of rest home auditing and certification arrangements. However, more work remains to be done and it is still too early to tell whether the efforts to make the current arrangements work as intended will make a difference or whether certification is fundamentally unable to do what the legislation envisaged...
October 2008: We audited how the Ministry of Health has monitored progress toward the Primary Health Care Strategy’s goals. Overall, the Ministry needs to review its measures to ensure that it can assess progress toward all of the goals in the Strategy’s vision statement...
Collecting and using information about suicide
