Synergia - Design Realise Sustain

Cardiac Surgery Prioritisation

Issue

For the last decade the New Zealand Ministry of Health has been committed to increasing the productivity and reducing waiting times for elective surgery. The rationing of limited resources and the prioritisation of access to people most in need has been central to achieving these goals. A key component off the solution which has driving huge advances over the 10 years has been the development of a range of assessment tools to increase the consistency of prioritisation for access based on need. Cardiac surgery was one of the initial elective services included in the programme.

Systemic Approaches to Child Safety

Issue

Child, Youth and Family (CYF) needed to respond to allegations of neglect and abuse against NZ children.

Since 2003, notifications to CYF have increased significantly. The year-end forecast in 2003 was 40,000 notifications. The forecast was close to 65,000 notifications for 2006/2007.

These rapidly increasing rates created wait lists and high numbers of unattended cases. Further, despite intensive efforts to eliminate the problem no approach addressed the fundamental causes of the problem. Read more...

Bringing the flaxroots into regional planning

Issue

Bay of Plenty Regional Council were keen to explore the potential social and economic impacts of key directions in its draft Regional Policy statement. Decision-makers in particular wanted to hear the voices that are often not under-represented in policy debates, particularly Maori and high deprivation communities.

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Innovations in Primary Health Information

Synergia developed a series of case studies profiling the use of information in primary health care to improve clinical practice, organisational performance and health outcomes. The overall aim of the project was to highlight successes and learnings to motivate wider health sector uptake of innovation in health care information.

A Strategy for Developing Strong Families

Issue

A review of the Child, Youth and Family Services revealed a gap in the leadership and co-ordination of services that support families. Government agreed that a new family services function would be set up within the Ministry of Social Development.

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Healthy Eating and Healthy Action - Collaboration for Success

Issue

Improving nutrition and physical activity is a Government priority. But the system to support physical activity and nutrition programmes across Auckland was fragmented with disconnected policies, funding streams, priorities, programmes and providers.

The three Auckland District Health Boards and the Ministry of Health identified that a whole system approach was required to ‘join up’ the systems and focus investment into priority areas and build whole system performance.