6 December 2022
Chris McCashin
[FYI request #21145 email]
Tēnā koe Chris
Your Official Information Act request, reference: HNZ00007459
Thank you for your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act) to the Ministry of
Health on 17 November 2022. Your request was transferred in full to Te Whatu Ora - Health New
Zealand on 24 November 2022 as the information is more closely connected with the functions of
our agencies. You requested:
“Could you please provide a data set in Excel or csv file with the following columns - for the
last 12 years by month to the end of this year for the whole of New Zealand.
Column 1 to 5
- Residential Facility Name
- Level of Care (E.g. Rest Home, Dementia, Hospital Level)
- Physical Address
- Geocoded Location - NZTM
- DHB within which the Residential Care Facility resides
Column 6 - Number of Residents at the Start of the Period
Column 7 - Deaths During Period - whether the person died in the facility or in another
facility (such as a public hospital)
Column 8 - Age Group at Death (in 10 year bands)
I would expect that these numbers are available from the MoH's payment system for
residential care, or a national dataset collated from DHB systems. Residents should be able
to be counted and tracked via their NHI number (which records their date of death and age
at death).
If there are any commercial or privacy issues with the above dataset then please discuss.
There may be ways that you can communicate:
A - the % Death Rate per Facility (Column 7 / Column 6)
B - wider Age Groups (e.g. 10 year bands to 90 then everyone above 90)
C - Hide the Facility Name"
The payment system does not record around 2,000 residents who pay the full cost themselves and
therefore receive no payment from Te Whatu Ora, nor does it record where the deaths occurred.
In order to provide the information, you have requested, Te Whatu Ora would need to divert
personnel from their core duties and allocate extra time to complete this task. The diversion of
these resources would impair Te Whatu Ora’s ability to continue standard operations and would be
an inefficient use of Te Whatu Ora’s resources. As such, your request is refused under section
18(f) of the Act, requires substantial collation. The greater public interest is in the effective and
efficient administration of the public service.
We have considered whether Te Whatu Ora would be able to respond to your requests given extra
time, or the ability to charge for the information requested. I have concluded that, in either case, Te
Whatu Ora’s ability to undertake its work would stil be prejudiced
If you have any questions, you can contact us a
t [email address].
If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the
Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
by phoning 0800 802 602.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, Health NZ may proactively
release a copy of this response on Health NZ’s website. Al requester data, including your name
and contact details, wil be removed prior to release. The released response wil be made available
on our website.
Nāku iti noa, nā
Sasha Wood
Interim Lead OIA & Proactive Release
Government Partnership and Risk
TeWhatuOra.govt.nz