The Health Sector is much more complex even than its formal complexity. There are multiple competing agendas in play – more so than in any other sector. There are national vs regional vs local agendas. There are private and public interests which are not always well-aligned. And there is the ever-present tension between health managers who have to do more with less, and clinicians whose primary duty is to the patients in their care.
The Health Sector faces inexorably rising demand for its services with constrained funding, capability and capacity. Our ageing population is an intensifying challenge. With increasing obesity our children will be the first generation to have poorer health than their parents. Ageing and obesity together are resulting in growing and increasingly complex comorbidity. With growing wealth and income disparities it is the inter-generational poor that are presenting disproportionately, often via GPs who have not had the resources to work them up adequately.
Azimuth Consulting has many years of experience in the Health Sector of Aotearoa-New Zealand and has developed a visceral as well as intellectual understanding of the sector. We have conducted a wide variety of engagements including:
- Implementation of the nationally co-ordinated cervical cytology register in all DHBs for the National Cervical Screening Register
- Development of a Systems Dynamic Model to inform the Royal NZ College of General Practitioners of factors affecting long term workforce demands and constraints
- Development of the IS Strategic Plan for a new specialist surgical hospital in Christchurch
- ICT operations review for a private hospital
- User requirements specification, selection and implementation of a number of clinical and corporate admin systems for several DHBs
- Five year services planning at a major DHB
- The development of business cases for internal and external funding in accordance with the Better Business Cases methodology of the NZ Treasury
- Service management reviews
- Waiting-list management and production planning
Our approach gives resource-strapped DHBs the best value-for-money over the longer term because we work with you at your pace. Our experienced management consultants work with your personnel, coaching them and transferring capability.
We know from our experience of the Health Sector that there are still significant effectiveness and efficiency gains to be made within existing funding and infrastructure. These gains do not require major investment in state-of-the-art ICT or in new wards and clinics. They require behaviour modulation and improved utilisation of the clinical skills and facilities that are already in place. If you are looking for ways to significantly improve your service delivery please contact us.