Hospital Services
North Shore Hospital Campus
Shakespeare Road, Takapuna
Private Bag 93-503, Takapuna
Auckland 0740
Telephone: 09 489 0527
Facsimile: 09 486 8339
17 June 2020
Amy S Van Wey Lovatt
[FYI request #12943 email]
Dear Amy
Re: OIA request – DHB policies, protocols and best-practice documents
Thank you for your Official Information Act request received 2 June seeking information about IANZ
accreditation of laboratory and radiology departments from Waitematā DHB.
Before responding to your specific questions, it may be useful to provide some context about our
services.
Waitematā DHB serves a population of more than 630,000 across the North Shore, Waitakere and
Rodney areas, the largest and one of the most rapidly growing DHBs in the country. We are the
largest employer in the district, employing around 7,500 people across more than 80 locations.
In addition to providing services to our own population, we are also the metropolitan Auckland
provider of forensic psychiatry, child disability services, child community dental services and
community alcohol and drug services.
In response to your request, we can provide the following information:
1. I respectfully request that your DHB make ALL of your DHB policies, protocols and best-
practice documents publicly available.
Although this is not a request for official information, we can advise that we have more than 6,000
control ed documents including policies, procedures, protocols, clinical guidance, best-practice
documents, staff and patient information leaflets. The platform our control ed documents are kept
on is not suited to public access. Publishing relevant documents is a huge and expensive
undertaking. Currently, we do not have the ability to publish this large tranche of documents on our
website but this is something the DHB is working towards.
If you are interested in a specific subject matter that you feel may have an associated controlled
document, please do not hesitate to submit this through a separate OIA request.
2. Is your DHB laboratory and radiology departments, or the agencies your DHB contracts out
pathology and radiology services to, International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ)-
accredited?
Waitematā DHB’s laboratory and radiology departments are IANZ-accredited. Service providers for
any services contracted out by the pathology and radiology departments are also required to be
IANZ-accredited.
3. In the event that your DHB, or the agencies your DHB has contracted out pathology and
radiology services, is IANZ-accredited, I respectfully request ALL of the documentation
submitted to IANZ for accreditation by your DHB (or contracted agencies) be made publicly
available upon your DHB website (or as a link to your contracted agencies’ website). Again,
while this may appear to be a daunting task on the face of it, this information ought to be in
electronic form and have been col ated prior to submission to IANZ. Thus, again, my request
ought to be accomplished by a click of a button or, at most, a few lines of code to link the
website to the appropriate folder on your internal systems.
Waitematā DHB has provided hundreds of documents to IANZ for the purposes of the accreditation
audits. These documents cannot not be made available at the click of a button or with a few lines of
code as you suggest. They would need to be col ated and reviewed to ensure they are suitable for
publication. As outlined previously, we are working towards publishing control ed documents on our
website.
The alternative is to supply the information directly to you. However, due to the volume of work
involved we have considered whether extending the timeframe for responding to this element of
your request or employing a contractor would assist us with managing the scale of this task but have
concluded that it would not.
The information is technical and only a person familiar with Waitematā DHB’s laboratory and
radiology operations and with the relevant technical qualifications/experience would be able to
undertake it. The Waitematā DHB staff members who have the necessary familiarity and
qualification/experience are fully tasked with their day-to-day operational roles and it is not possible
to withdraw them from their duties without impacting the delivery of our services.
We are, therefore, refusing this aspect of your request under section 18(f) of the Official Information
Act 1982 as the information requested cannot be made available without substantial collation or
research. You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision.
Information about how to make a complaint is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz.
I trust that the information we have been able to provide is helpful.
Waitematā DHB supports the open disclosure of information to assist community understanding of
how we are delivering publicly funded healthcare. This includes the proactive publication of
anonymised Official Information Act responses on our website from 10 working days after they have
been released.
If you consider there are good reasons why this response should not be made publicly available, we
wil be happy to consider your views.
Yours sincerely
Mark Shepherd
Director Provider Healthcare Services
Waitematā District Health Board
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