Patients mainly happy with hospital treatment - report

Patients are generally happy with how they are treated in the country's public hospitals, a new report says.

Hospital Benchmark Information (HBI) reports are produced quarterly by the Ministry of Health and track the performance of all public hospitals in New Zealand against 15 key performance measures.

The reports help hospitals measure their performance against one another and look for ways to improve, a ministry spokesman said.

Among the performance measures are triage rates (emergency department waiting times), patient satisfaction, average length of stay and acute readmissions.

National triage rates for category one patients was 100 per cent.

A spokesman said this was largely due to improved accuracy of reporting.

Rates for category two patients rose slightly in the latest quarter to 69.9 per cent, from 67.5 per cent in the September 2008 quarter.

Overall patient satisfaction rates for the country were over 88 per cent.

The ministry began measuring patient satisfaction levels in 2000.

- NZPA