David Farrar: Health Target 1 – cancer waiting times

Over this week I am going to blog the data on the five health targets the Government has set for the health system. Each of them tells a very interesting story when we look at the data for the last nine years.

All data comes from the fact sheets published by Health NZ.

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The target is 90% of cancer patients start treatment within 31 days. As you can see it went from 83.8% to 88.5% by June 2017. In the transition year it was static at 88.6%. Then over the next five years it dropped to 84.9%. In the latest transition year it dipped down to 84.2%.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.