7 OCTOBER NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE 3389

• Pacific Health Strategy.

  d) ensure that all services, regardless of the ring fence NDOC through which they are purchased (personal health, mental health services or public health services), contribute towards improving population health goals and objectives.

Goal 9: Well co-ordinated, integrated services that contribute to better health and disability outcomes

Develop initiatives that integrate the work of providers of primary and secondary health services so as to maximise the overall health outcomes for people and their communities.

In particular:

a) expand significantly the use of innovative contracting focused on improving outcomes for individual patients and for the population health by bringing various parts of the sector together, especially the primary and the secondary sectors.

b) encourage, through appropriate funding incentives, the involvement of local communities in developing their own solutions to their health issues, by welcoming new ideas that improve health outcomes in an area and/or lead to better and more effective use of health resources.

c) support pilot initiatives designed to better integrate primary and secondary health services.

d) specifically demonstrate, in your regular reports to the Ministry of Health, the initiatives that are being funded to give effect to this goal.

Goal 10: Intersectoral collaboration between agencies and providers to achieve social policy objectives

Promote and support collaborative intersectoral initiatives to improve the delivery of health and other social services that recognise the person as a whole.

In particular:

a) continue to work with other Government agencies to implement the Strengthening Families strategy aimed at breaking the cycle of disadvantage. These programmes are to focus on local specific long-term initiatives that address the needs of children and families with high support needs.

b) work with the Ministry of Health, and other Government agencies as appropriate, to contribute to the development and implementation of other intersectoral initiatives.

Goal 11: Improved capability and adaptability of the health and disability sector

Improve the long-term performance of the health system by enhancing adaptability and the use of information, and ensuring greater coherence between health service purchasing and public hospital ownership strategies.

In particular:

a) move to longer-term contracts with HHSs and other providers to ensure their ability to plan for the delivery of the services they are contracted to provide.

b) move to contracts that provide incentives to improve efficiency in health service delivery, including price/minimum-volume contracting, that commits a provider to a certain minimum, but allows the provider to increase the volume of services they deliver, within the funding they have, where the provider is capable of doing so.

c) move to resolve any outstanding issues in contracts with the HHSs that relate to the process of new hospital developments, for example the major developments for Auckland Healthcare (Auckland) and Capital Coast Health (Wellington).

d) continue to pilot, trial, develop and/or advance new ways of delivering services, for example, mobile surgery and medical clinics, mobile dentistry clinics and similar initiatives.

e) work to improve relationships with health and disability providers and health professionals with the aim of having relationships based on trust and co-operation.

f) contribute, as appropriate with other agencies, to the development and, when approved, the implementation of strategies designed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the health and disability support system.

g) freely share information with providers and other agencies to support planning, funding, monitoring and evaluation of health services.

h) contract to allow for flexibility and innovation in the way services are provided.

i) significantly improve sector information, including data which provides accurate and timely information on HFA-funded health and disability support service delivery in a cost-effective way in order to:

- monitor trends in service provision and demand,
- unmet need and disparities as they affect Maori Pacific peoples and other groups
- project future trends
- feed into both strategic and operational planning for future service delivery.

Goal 12: Sustainability of the publicly funded health system

Fund and develop health services on a sustainable basis, lower compliance and administration costs, and continue to improve management of demand-driven expenditure.

In particular:

a) give effect to the workforce development objectives outlined elsewhere in this Crown’s Statement of Objectives, including the proposed review of the general workforce and clinical training system to be conducted in 2000/01 by the Ministry of Health.

b) allocate specific funding to develop the capability to robustly evaluate implemented policy (operational research) to determine whether the expected outcomes have eventuated.

c) recognise the importance to all providers of reducing the costs of complying with requirements imposed by the HFA, and contribute to the development of, and fully implement, compliance cost reduction initiatives approved by the Minister of Health.

Dated at Wellington this 30th day of September 1999.

WYATT CREECH, Minister of Health.