Health Sector Information Release

In February 2007 the Treasury released material relating to the Treasury's work on health sector productivity, its in-depth review of the health sector and its input to the review of the Ministry of Health.

Read the related media release by Hon Dr Michael Cullen, Minister of Finance on the Beehive web site: Treasury reports on health sector (15 February 2007).

Health Sector Productivity#

One of Treasury's roles is to advise on the macroeconomy and considering productivity issues is an important focus of the Treasury's work programme.

The set of papers released here includes Treasury work on measuring productivity in the health sector. It includes discussion of the complexities involved in such measurement - a challenge for New Zealand and other OECD countries.

In-depth Review of the Health Sector#

During April to December 2005 the Treasury undertook an in-depth review of the health sector. The background material that fed into this review and that formed the Treasury's advice to Ministers is released here.

This material reflects judgements made by the Treasury about the health sector. While the Treasury drew heavily on published information, others may have reached different conclusions. Note that work is also ongoing by the Ministry of Health to address many of the issues raised.

Some of the material is now dated in a technical sense. For example, PHARMAC’s estimates of the cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year for a range of pharmaceuticals provide a snapshot based on the best data available at the time. PHARMAC may well come to different conclusions now if it were to re-run those calculations on more recent data.

Review of the Ministry of Health#

The Treasury provided some input into the Director-General of Health's review of the Ministry of Health in 2006.