Friday, 26 June 2020
Amy S Van Wey Lovatt
[FYI request #12978 email]
Re: Official Information Act Request - Publication of all DHB policies, protocols and best practice documents
Kia ora Amy
Thank you for your request for information under the Official Information Act 1982.
You asked:
I have repeatedly been assured from DHB's that they are committed to transparency.
Request 1:
Thus, I respectfully request that your DHB make ALL of your DHB policies, protocols and best practice
documents publicly available.
While on the face of it, my request may seem like a time consuming task; however, this should not be
the case. Currently, DHB policies, protocols and best practice documents are held electronically and
are available on your DHB intranet (employee access only), and in many cases, there are already
hyper-links between policies, protocols and best practice documents. Thus, in order to change the
setting to the policies, protocols and best practice documents from private (intranet and employee
access only) to public ought to be accomplished by a click of a button (or, at most, a line or two of
code). Upon completion, I respectfully request a response with the website address to the DHB
policies.
Request 2:
Is your DHB laboratory and radiology departments, or the agencies your DHB has contract out
pathology and radiology services, IANZ accredited?
Request 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 collated
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.
I make these request in order to save time, energy and financial resources. By making the requested
information publicly available, the DHB will not need to spend valuable time and resources in
answering repeated requests for policies, protocols and best practice documentation, and will help
your DHB become compliant with Ministry of Health Standards (such as HISO 10064 and 10029) and
legislative requirements, such as those described in the Health Information Privacy Code 1994, Health
Act 1956, and Health and Disability Commissioner (Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers'
Rights) Regulations 1996.
Hauora Tairāwhiti’s response is as follows:
1. While this request does not meet the criteria for an Official Information Request, we can advise that
Hauora Tairāwhiti has a substantial number (>1000) of policies, protocols, guidelines, and best
practice documents. To publish all these documents on the Hauora Tairāwhiti website would require
a large amount of resourcing, and more than the DHB currently has capacity for.
2. Yes, Hauora Tairāwhiti’s contracted agency for laboratory services, MedLab Central is IANZ
accredited as is Hauora Tairāwhiti’s Radiology Department.
3. This request does not meet the criteria for an Official Information Request; it is a request for
publication and access to information provided to an accreditation agency, on an on-going basis.
To publish all these documents on the DHB website would require significant work and technical
resource, and more than the DHB has capacity for at present.
In addition, we do not believe there is a public interest in this information, only the fact of
accreditation being achieved and current - as with any audit, the information (working papers)
collected by the auditor for that professional purpose are not of any interest in themselves.
Accreditation status is available on the IANZ site:
https://www.ianz.govt.nz/directory/
If you are not satisfied with this response you may contact the Office of the Ombudsmen, phone 0800 802
602.
Please note this response or an edited version of this response may be published on the Hauora Tairāwhiti
DHB website. Your personal/identifying information will be redacted from any responses published. If you
feel that there are good reasons why your response should not be made publicly available, we will be happy
to consider this.
Ngā mihi
Jim Green
Chief Executive
Hauora Tairāwhiti
