133 Molesworth Street
PO Box 5013
Wellington 6140
New Zealand
T+64 4 496 2000
28 March 2022
T Barnett
By email: [FYI request #18682 email]
Ref:
H202203310
Tēnā koe Mr Barnett
Response to your request for official information
Thank you for your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act) to the Ministry of
Health (the Ministry) on 25 February 2022 for information regarding the Ministry’s complaint
process. I wil respond to each part of your request in turn.
1. Policy/procedures/guidelines for complaining directly to the ministry of health (about the
ministry of health):
The Ministry encourages anyone who has a concern or complaint about the Ministry’s funded
service provider or disability supports, to first speak to the organisation who supports them or their
managers. Often issues can be resolved straight away. Whether people make a complaint in
person, in writing or anonymously, the service provider must deal with the complaint.
However if people feel unable to make a complaint to the organisation that provides the
disability support services, or if they want to take their complaint further they can complain to the
Ministry of Health using one of the options outlined on the Ministry website:
www.health.govt.nz/your-health/services-and-support/disability-services/disability-support-
complaints-and-feedback/how-make-complaint.
Complaints can also be made to the Health and Disability Commissioner (HDC) if people do not
want to make a complaint to the Ministry. The complaint process for HDC can be found on their
website on the following link:
www.hdc.org.nz/making-a-complaint/.
2- Number of complaints received last year about your contractor Whakarongorau Aotearoa
(in regard to them providing the healthline/covid healthline service)
The Ministry captures formal complaints about services or providers that we fund if those
complaints are received formally through the process as outlined as in question 1.
Whakarongorau Aotearoa provides a number of services under the National Telehealth
Services Agreement, including Healthline, National Poisons Centre, Emergency Triage, Earlier
Mental Health Response as well as numerous COVID-19 related telehealth services supporting
contact tracing as well as those isolating at home with COVID-19 through the Care in the
Community Programme. The complaints across these services are reported annually through
the Annual Plan but are not broken down by service. The Ministry recently published the current
National Telehealth Service (NTS) 2021/22 annual plan on the NTS webpage, which includes
the 20/21 performance measures. This can be found on the following link:
www.health.govt.nz/our-work/national-telehealth-service.
3. The complaints procedure/guidelines/policy for your contractor Whakarongorau
Aotearoa:
Whakarongorau Aotearoa operates under the National Telehealth Service Agreement which
sets out requirement for Complaints management under section 7 of the publicly available
document:
www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/pages/nts_agreement_for_services_with_redaction
s.pdf.
I trust this information fulfils your request. Under section 28(3) of the Act, you have the right to
ask the Ombudsman to review any decisions made under this request. The Ombudsman may
be contacted by email at:
[email address] or by calling 0800 802 602.
Please note that this response, with your personal details removed, may be published on the
Ministry of Health website at:
www.health.govt.nz/about-ministry/information-releases.
Nāku noa, nā
Mark Powell
Group Manager. Community Health System Improvement & Innovation
Health System Improvement and Innovation
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