Health reform in New Zealand: short-term gain but long-term pain?

Abstract

Following a period of quite radical structural reform during the 1990s, health reform in New Zealand is now more incremental and often ‘under the radar’ of public scrutiny and debate. However, many changes have been made to the roles and functions of key agencies and this could have a profound effect on the direction and performance of the public health system. In particular, the objective of reform at the national level has shifted away from improving population health and reducing health disparities towards improving the performance of service providers. This article describes some of the reforms that have been introduced in recent years and discusses some implications of these changes. We argue that policy settings that are concerned only with getting the right services to the right people at the right time are inherently short-sighted if they fail to tackle the long-term causes of increasing demand for future health services.

Keywords::

• centralization
• health policy
• health reform
• New Zealand
• population health

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.