Category: Ministry of Health

Summary

The Mental Health and Addiction Workforce Action Plan is part of an outcomes approach. It contributes to achieving the vision of the New Zealand Health Strategy. For mental health and addiction, this means enabling people to thrive and experience wellbeing wherever they live and whatever their circumstances.

Together with the Mental Health and Wellbeing Outcome Framework and the Commissioning Framework, it will help us reshape our system to centre on people and what matters to them.

Our workforce is our most valuable resource, and achieving our vision depends on a capable and motivated workforce that works with people and their families and whānau to get the best outcomes.

This Action Plan recognises the importance of a combined effort to address the social determinants of health by working across health, justice and social sectors to ensure equitable positive outcomes for all New Zealanders.

It includes actions to develop a workforce with the right skills, knowledge, competencies and attitudes needed to design and deliver integrated and innovative responses.

The actions outlined in this action plan will support the development of the primary health care, community and specialist workforce to be well equipped, integrated, competent and capable to focus on improving health and wellbeing. It will guide decisions about investment and resourcing for the next five years and is relevant to all people working to improve outcomes for those with mental health and addiction issues.

This document describes what government disability support funding (funding) can be used to buy. It is for people using:

• Enhanced Individualised Funding (EIF)
• Choice in Community Living (CiCL)
• Enabling Good Lives (EGL) hosted personal budgets
• Flexible Respite Budgets
• Flexible Disability Supports (FDS).

Disabled people who can make choices about how they use their funding are more likely to buy goods and services that make their lives easier and/or better. This purchasing policy aims to give disabled people as much flexibility as possible over what they can buy with government funding.

A disability support (support) is a good or a service that helps a person overcome barriers that come with having an impairment within a disabling society.

Criteria

There are four criteria that must be met to be able to use funding to help buy a disability support.

One: It helps people live their life or makes their life better

The support should help people live a good life.

Each person has a different idea about what a good life is. The person’s goals and aspirations for a good life should be written out in a personal plan. This can be done with help from their Needs Assessment and Service Coordination (NASC) organisation or Independent Facilitator. Personal plans should include goals such as:

• having good relationships
• maintaining or improving skills
• being able to do everyday activities at home or in the community
• the person’s family/whānau being supported to continue their caring roles
• being able to live in a home of the person’s own choice.

Two: It is a disability support

The support:

• is only needed because the person is disabled and/or
• costs more than would be the case if the person weren’t disabled and/or
• is in addition to, or complements, the goods and/or services the person would need if they didn’t experience disability.

Three: It is reasonable and cost- effective

Generally, the support should be ‘reasonable’. Here it means that the support should cost about the same as (or less than) the market price for comparable things.

‘Cost-effective’ here means the best available outcome for the money spent.
 
It might cost more than another type of support but will help the person more, it will last longer or mean that less is spent on some other support now or in the future.

Four: It is not subject to a limit or exclusion

A person should explore other funding options to help get a support. Examples of other options include:

• the Disability Allowance (from Work and Income)
• grants, charitable donations
• equipment funding (either by the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Health)
• specialist services, (eg, the Ministry of Health’s Behaviour Support Services and Child Development Services)
• district health board funded therapies
• transport allowances (eg, the Total Mobility transport scheme).

In some cases, people can buy a support when funding for that support has been turned down by (or on behalf of) the responsible government agency or if waiting times are too long and the proposed support is expected to:

• achieve a person’s life goal that would not otherwise be achievable and/or
• reduce disability support costs over time and/or
• reduce the risk that disability support costs will increase in the future.

The funding cannot be used for:

• paying family carers who are either a family member living with the disabled person or a parent or a spouse
• illegal activities, gambling or alcohol
• things that are not disability supports, such as health services provided by a hospital or income support.

Further help

For more help in understanding this policy, people can talk to their NASC organisation or their provider to work out if a support they want to buy meets the criteria.

See Ministry of Health Purchasing Guidelines Processes (docx, 221 KB) and Ministry of Health Purchasing Guidelines Notes (docx, 186 KB) for more information.

These tables contain information on the underlying causes of all deaths registered in New Zealand in 2015. A ‘Quick facts’ section also includes information on rates of death by ethnicity and selected causes of mortality.

Most information is broken down by age, sex, ethnicity, district health board and statistical classification chapters, subgroups and three character codes.

These tables form part of the Mortality and Demographic Data annual series.

This data is sourced from the Mortality Collection.

Quick facts

• There were 31,796 deaths registered in 2015, equating to an age-standardised rate of 380.1 deaths per 100,000 population.
• Males accounted for 15,929 deaths in 2015, slightly higher than for females (15,867).
• Māori accounted for 3,413 deaths in 2015, 10.7% of all deaths registered.
• The leading causes of death were cancer, ischaemic heart diseases and cerebrovascular diseases. Cancer deaths made up 30.2% of all deaths, ischaemic heart diseases 15.8% and cerebrovascular diseases 7.8% in 2015.
• For Māori, the leading causes of death in 2015 were cancer, ischaemic heart diseases and chronic lower respiratory diseases.
• Similar to previous years, mortality rates were generally higher for males than for females. For example, males had higher mortality rates for melanoma and ischaemic heart diseases compared with females in 2015.
• As seen in previous years, mortality rates for Māori were generally higher than for non-Māori. For example, Māori had higher mortality rates for diabetes mellitus and chronic lower respiratory diseases compared with non-Māori in 2015.

Total number of deaths and mortality rates, 2015

	Number of deaths			Percentage of deaths by sex		Mortality rate
	Total	Male	Female	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female
Māori	3,413	1,801	1,612	52.8	47.2	648.9	746.5	567.8
Non-Māori	28,383	14,128	14,255	49.8	50.2	354.1	411.3	303.4
Total	31,796	15,929	15,867	50.1	49.9	380.1	441.0	326.1

Note: rates per 100,000 population, age standardised to WHO World Standard Population.

Summary

These tables present mortality data (numbers and age-standardised rates) by sex for certain causes of death for each year from 1948 to 2015. Māori and non-Māori mortality data is presented from 1996 to 2015.

The causes of death included are:

• All cancer
• Ischaemic heart disease
• Cerebrovascular disease
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases
• Other forms of heart disease
• Influenza and Pneumonia
• Diabetes mellitus
• Motor vehicle accidents
• Intentional self-harm
• Assault
• All deaths.

Numbers and rates are available as:

• tables and interactive graphs (xlsx, 372 KB) showing trends over time in an excel workbook
• a data file (csv, 196 KB) in csv format with an accompanying data dictionary (docx, 17 KB).

About the data used in this edition

Data from 1948 to 1995 presented in these tables was sourced from publications in the Ministry of Health Mortality data and stats series.

Data from 1996 to 2015 was extracted from the New Zealand Mortality Collection electronic records on 13 February 2018. Rates have been re-calculated for data on deaths registered between 1996 and 2015, to reflect ongoing updates to data in the New Zealand Mortality Collection (eg, following the release of coroners’ findings) and the revision of population estimates. This has resulted in small changes to some numbers and rates from those reported in previous publications.

At the time of data extraction, there were 575,058 deaths registered from 1996 to 2015. Included in this data were 669 deaths provisionally coded (awaiting coroners’ findings) and 32 deaths awaiting coroners’ findings with no known cause.

Ethnic breakdowns of mortality data are only shown from 1996 onwards because there was a significant change in the way ethnicity was defined, and in the way ethnicity data was collected in 1995. For more information please refer to the Ministry of Health report, Mortality and Demographic Data 1996.

These tables contain provisional information on the underlying causes of all deaths registered in New Zealand in 2015. A ‘Quick facts’ section also includes information on rates of death by ethnicity and selected causes of mortality.

Most information is broken down by age, sex, ethnicity, district health board and statistical classification chapters, subgroups and three character codes. Information for deaths from external causes has been aggregated. Further detail will be provided when the final data for 2015 is released in 2018.

These tables form part of the Mortality and Demographic Data annual series.

This data is sourced from the Mortality Collection.

Key mortality statistics – 2015

	Number of deaths			Percentage of deaths by sex		Mortality rate
	Total	Male	Female	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female
Māori	3,413	1,801	1,612	52.8	47.2	648.9	746.5	567.8
Non-Māori	28,383	14,128	14,255	49.8	50.2	354.1	411.3	303.4
Total	31,796	15,929	15,867	50.1	49.9	380.1	441.0	326.1

Note: rates per 100,000 population, age standardised to WHO World Standard Population.

Summary

Whāia Te Ao Mārama is a culturally anchored approach to supporting Māori with disabilities (tāngata whaikaha) and their whānau because Māori are more likely to be disabled than the general population. Most tāngata whaikaha identify as Māori first, so access to Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) is important to them.

The previous version of the plan, Whāia Te Ao Mārama 2012 to 2017, led to changes that improved outcomes for tāngata whaikaha and their whānau. While much has been achieved between 2012 and 2017, improving outcomes for tāngata whaikaha and their whānau remains an important priority.

Whāia Te Ao Mārama:

• supports tāngata whaikaha to achieve their aspirations and to reduce the barriers they face
• builds on the foundation, vision and outcomes of Whāia Te Ao Mārama 2012 to 2017
• outlines progress and changes since 2012
• documents goals and actions for 2018 to 2022.
• was developed in partnership with Māori disability stakeholders and with the oversight and endorsement of Te Ao Mārama: the Māori Disability Advisory Group.

Whāia Te Ao Mārama recognises that everyone must work together to achieve the vision – tāngata whaikaha pursue a good life with support. It outlines what the Ministry is committing to do from 2018 to 2022 and provides examples of actions tāngata whaikaha, whānau, health and disability providers, iwi and other organisations can take.

Where I Live; How I Live is about optimising the independence and self-determination of disabled people. It is in line with the Enabling Good Lives (EGL) principles that support people with a disability to make decisions about the kind of life they want.

This strategy guides the Ministry’s Disability Support Services, disabled people and their families/whānau, and residential service providers, in achieving the following outcomes:

• greater choice, control and flexibility over where and how disabled people live
• access to information and support to enable well-considered choices about where and how disabled people choose to live and receive support
• increasing independence and choice fostered by service providers.

The strategy also aims to improve options for disabled people whose complex support requirements present challenges for the delivery of a sustainable service.

Version 4.4

The National Booking Reporting System (NBRS) File Specification defines the file format used to send information to the Ministry for inclusion in the NBRS national collection. This includes the file layout and, to a lesser extent, the business rules used for validating the data items within the file.

There are two audiences for this document:

• Software developers designing, implementing and altering provider systems to ensure that they export information in a format suitable for loading into the national collection.
• Business analysts verifying that all required data elements are present and specified correctly.

This document should be read in conjunction with the National Booking Reporting System Data Dictionary.

DataPharm is a web-based tool (beta version) that displays summary data about prescriptions and dispensings that were dispensed in the community and funded by the New Zealand Government. The data presented is sourced from the Ministry of Health’s Pharmaceutical Collection.

You can search the data and filter by year of dispensing, medicine (at chemical formulation, chemical, therapeutic group level and therapeutic group level 2), and DHB area where the prescription was filled. You can download the filtered results in .csv format.

• DataPharm (beta)

A technical document is available to accompany the web tool. The document contains information about key data limitations and guidance on interpreting the data presented as clinical context, funding, practice and a number of other contextual properties can affect the trends you see.

• DataPharm: technical document (Word, 192 KB)

The aggregate data presented in DataPharm is available for you to download as a zip package of .csv files.

• DataPharm: full data set (Zip, 4.7 MB)

We welcome your feedback on this tool. You can access the feedback form here:

• DataPharm (beta) feedback form

The New Model for Supporting Disabled People is about people having more choice, control and flexibility over they supports they receive and the lives they lead. This includes how they use their funding and the disability supports they buy with it. Under the New Model people can be allocated an amount of funding and make decisions about how to use it.

The Ministry of Health has purchasing guidelines which outline how people can use their funding. These include:

1. Money needs to be spent on disability supports ( things that a disabled person needs because they have a disability).
2. Disability supports contribute to an outcome in the person’s plan for a good life.
3. The disability supports are within the scope of relevant Ministry of Health policies and responsibilities.

Needs Assesment and Service Coordination (NASC) organisations, Enhanced Individualised Funding (EIF) hosts, and Choice in Community Living providers can assist in interpreting these guidelines. The Ministry will also provide support if needed though a Purchasing Guidelines panel that includes disabled people and family members.