David Farrar: Health Target 4 – Specialist appointments

The fourth health target is for 95% of patients to wait less than four months for a first specialist assessment.

From June 2015 to June 2017 almost 100% of patients got a first assessment within four months – 99.8% and 99.2%. It fell for the next six years to 69.6% and then to 61.5%


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The impact of this decline is huge. There are 175,000 on the waitlist so eight years ago only say 2,000 would be waiting more than four months. Now 70,000 are. Another huge repair job needed.

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.