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Evaluation of the District Health Board-Ministry of Health Prioritisation Framework: The Best Use of Available Resources

Date of publication: December 2004

• Summary
• Publication availability

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Summary

At the beginning of 2004, the National Health Committee (NHC) was invited to evaluate a series of pilots of a prioritisation framework being developed by the New Zealand Ministry of Health and District Health Boards (DHBs). This report summarises the methodology and contains the recommendations from that evaluation.

The prioritisation framework – The Best Use of Available Resources: an approach to prioritisation – was developed to assist decision makers in thinking about and conducting prioritisation and to support consistency, coherency, and transparency in the allocating resources in New Zealand's health sector.

After development of the framework, the Working Group, comprising Ministry of Health and DHB representatives, approached the NHC and invited it to evaluate how different organisations have piloted the framework. The NHC agreed to carry out this work.

The evaluation was divided into four sections, commencing with a discussion of the methodology behind the evaluation. The paper then moved to discussing background issues identified by pilot sites as influencing their ability to both utilise The Best Use of Available Resources, and undertake effective prioritisation in general. The third section of the paper, based primarily on interviews with analysts at the sites, outlined identified strengths and weaknesses of both the content and presentation of the framework. Finally, the paper outlined suggested ways in which implementation of the framework could be supported.

The evaluation found that response to the actual content of The Best Use of Available Resources was generally positive but did identify several perceived weaknesses in the content of the framework. The evaluation made eight recommendations to improve the framework.

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Publication availability

This publication is available in Word and PDF format below:

Evaluation of the District Health Board-Ministry of Health Prioritisation Framework: The Best Use of Available Resources (Word, 148 KB)
Evaluation of the District Health Board-Ministry of Health Prioritisation Framework: The Best Use of Available Resources (PDF, 343 KB)


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