To be attributed to Dr Leeanne Fisher, National Chief Mental Health and Addiction

Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has today published its first quarterly results for four of the five mental health and addiction targets, covering the period 1 July – 30 September 2024.

This is the first release of reporting against the targets and coincides with the publication of high-level implementation plans, which set out how we intend to make progress on achieving the targets by 2030.

The results released today show:

  • Faster access to specialist mental health and addiction services: 80.4 per cent of people accessing specialist mental health and addiction services were seen within three weeks. This is above the target of 80 per cent.   
  • Faster access to primary mental health and addiction services: 80.8 percent of people who needed to access primary mental health and addiction services through the Access and Choice programme were seen within one week. This is above the target of 80 per cent.  This is a new measure, which at this stage only has partial reporting, so we expect this result to change as reporting improves. 
  • Shorter mental health and addiction-related stays in emergency departments: 63.5 per cent of mental health and addiction-related emergency department presentations were admitted, discharged, or transferred from an emergency department within six hours. The target is 95 per cent.  
  • Increased mental health and addiction workforce development: 457 mental health and addiction professionals were trained in 2024.  The target is 500. 

While it appears we are meeting two of the targets already, we know more work is needed to improve data collection, quality, and completeness, and these results may change as monitoring and reporting improves.

As the quality of our data improves, so too will the accuracy of our performance results against targets, and thereby our understanding of what is needed to achieve them.

In the meantime, we are developing a work programme that increases access to support, grows the mental health and addiction workforce, and ensures we are focusing on prevention and early intervention. This work will be underpinned by our clear implementation plans with deliverables and milestones.

To support this, we are empowering the regions – bolstering our mental health and addiction system so that local and regional clinical leadership can make informed decisions about what is needed by their community to improve performance.

Faster access to both specialist and primary mental health and addiction services is a priority for Health NZ. We know that early and timely access to care is crucial to support people’s recovery, help them to live well, and prevent further deterioration in their mental health and overall quality of life. 

There is still work to do to ensure people presenting to EDs with mental health and addiction needs receive clinical assessment and treatment in a more timely manner. The time people spend in ED is one measure of how the whole system is working to support patients and their families, and we are focused on improving performance in this area and across the wider health system.

Our mental health and addiction teams will be key to delivering on these targets and we are focused on increasing this workforce. Of the 457 people trained in 2024, there were 299 Nursing Entry to Specialist Practice (NESP), 93 NESP Allied health workers, and 65 psychology intern placements. There are several other initiatives underway that will help to achieve this, including the release of the Mental Health and Addiction Workforce Plan and continued development of the associate psychology role and increasing the number of psychology intern placements.

Health NZ is focused on the delivery of better outcomes for New Zealanders with mental health and addiction needs and these targets are driving our performance of mental health and addiction services across the country.