Endorsement | Quality Accounts | Waitemata District Health Board

From the Chair and Chief Executive

Waitemata District Health Board (DHB) is the fastest-growing DHB in the country, by 2025 it is estimated that our population will increase by 99,000 people. To provide the best care for everyone, we need to continually find ways to innovate and improve. We invite you to read our Quality Account and to see how we have achieved this in 2016/17 and how we deliver our organisational purpose. Our organisational purpose defines what we strive to achieve, which is to:

Promote wellness
Prevent, cure and ameliorate ill health
Relieve suffering of those entrusted into our care

Our staff constantly endeavour to provide 'Best Care for Everyone' and this Quality Account showcases the numerous ways in which this has been achieved in 2016/17. We do this by working in partnership with our colleagues, patients, whānau and our community. It also shows how we continue to build on initiatives reported in the 2015/16 Quality Account. It is the contribution of our staff which makes these achievements possible. We would like to thank all the staff at Waitemata DHB and acknowledge their continual dedication to our community.

'Best Care for Everyone' is the quality standard for how we work together. Our quality aims are to provide care that is safe, effective, and focused on the individual needs of every patient and their whānau, to achieve health outcomes and patient experience that are among the best in the world and the leader in New Zealand.

2016/17 saw us continue to deliver on our commitment to quality and to evidence-based quality improvement.

Through our Institute of Innovation and Improvement (i3) we continue to drive quality improvement programmes that are co-designed and led by clinicians. Our Leapfrog Programme continues to pave the way for identifying and testing digital health technologies – once more putting our DHB at the forefront of 21st century healthcare.

We have maintained our excellent performance across the range of the Health Quality and Safety Commission's Quality and Safety Markers. The Markers have been used since July 2013 to monitor levels of harm relating to in-hospital falls, surgery and surgical site infections, hand hygiene compliance, and medication safety. Quality and Safety Marker highlights for 2016/17 include:

Lester Levy, Board Chair

Lester Levy
Board Chair

Dale Bramley, Chief Executive

Dale Bramley
Chief Executive

Reducing Harm

A review of the Reducing Harm from Falls programme shows the number of inpatient falls with harm, at Waitemata DHB, has reduced significantly - a 50% reduction for the period Jan-Apr 2017 compared to 2016. Our reporting for falls with harm by patient bed days also shows a downward trend.

Hand Hygiene

We have consistently exceeded the national hand hygiene compliance target of >80% since August 2015. We have the most comprehensive hand hygiene programme in New Zealand auditing all our inpatient wards and patient contact areas. For the period April to June 2017 compliance was at 86% and we achieved the fourth highest compliance rate in New Zealand.

Medication Safety

We have electronic medicines reconciliation (eMR) in place for 894 hospital beds and Electronic Prescribing and Administration (ePA) for 965 of our beds. Both these technology initiatives continue to improve medication safety and efficiency within the DHB. The rollout of this technology will continue in 2017/18.

Our ongoing commitment to evidence-based quality improvement is demonstrated through our Annual Health Excellence awards. These awards showcase the outstanding work by health professionals in our DHB to improve the health and wellbeing of the communities we serve. The Health Excellence Awards are about celebrating research and innovation excellence in healthcare. They provide a forum in which improvements can be embedded and shared, and some of the 2016/17 entries are showcased in this Quality Account. The Health Excellence Awards promotes a sharing of knowledge gained from projects that:

improve practice
develop and support the workforce
encourage community cooperation, compassionate healthcare and equitable access to health solutions

Whenua Pupuke - Clinical Skills Centre This year we opened our Whenua Pupuke clinical skills and education centre. The centre will enable our staff to develop the skills and capacities they need to keep pace with the rapid changing world of healthcare, ensuring that Waitemata DHB continues to find ways to innovate, improve and consistently provide the 'best care for everyone'.

We hope you find our Quality Account informative and interesting and further evidence of how, at Waitemata DHB, we live our values of 'Everyone Matters', 'With Compassion', 'Connected', and 'Better, Best, Brilliant'.