E22 A4 Annual Report 2010 FP.indd - Northland District Health Board

10
On behalf of the Northland District Health Board, we are pleased to present our Annual Report for the 2009/10 fi nancial year. This is
our principal accountability document to the people of Northland and describes the progress that we have made in the last year towards
improving the health and well-being of the people in our region.
On 31 December 2009, Lynette Stewart retired as the Northland DHB chair. Mrs Stewart had been chair of the Board for nine years
and as the incumbent chair, I was grateful for her assistance ensuring a smooth transition of leadership and inheritance of Northland DHB’s
sound state of affairs.
Once again, we have continued to demonstrate sound fi nancial management, reporting a modest fi nancial surplus for the year of
$869,000. Refl ective of a sound commitment by the executive and operational teams to achieve our objectives, it is especially pleasing
to see such a result considering the tight fi scal environment in which all district health boards now operate.
Nga Iwi o Te Tai Tokerau comprises 30% of Northland’s population and work continues to strengthen the way we discharge our statutory
obligations to engage with Maori on Maori health issues and strategies.
We have had a busy and demanding year with a number of highlights:
Message
From
• Implementation of the new national health targets has been challenging and providing a focus for action, our results show a solid end
of year achievement with an overall increase of performance in all areas.
• Committed to delivering more surgery for Northlanders, we performed a record number of elective surgical procedures than planned
being 6,675 discharges compared to 6,004 in the previous year, an increase of 11.18%.
• Since late April 2009, we have been involved in responding to the Novel A H1N1 infl uenza pandemic and have successfully
contained and managed it this winter. Sadly we also saw an outbreak of measles in the Hokianga in March 2010. No further
spread occurred, which is a testament to the sound contact tracing and outbreak management by Northland DHB’s public health
unit. This outbreak highlights the importance of continued vigilance and contact with those communities who choose not to immunise
their children.
• To maintain high quality health care for Northlanders, we are committed to working alongside the three other district health boards in
the northern region: Auckland, Waitemata and Counties Manukau, and at a national level with the 20 District Health Boards. We
have taken a leadership role in a number of regional and national initiatives and continue to ensure we fulfi l our leadership requirements.
We will continue to seek support for joint problem solving, prioritisation and necessary service changes.
• This year, over two hundred staff were awarded long service awards, covering service levels of twenty, thirty and forty years.