Testing for respiratory illnesses and Covid in hospitals
Julia Schiller made this Official Information request to Health New Zealand
The request is waiting for clarification. If you are Julia Schiller, please sign in to send a follow up message.
From: Julia Schiller
I am making on Official Information Act request.
I would like to know what the:
1) testing protocols
2) budget for testing
3) expenditure for testing
for Covid plus respiratory illnesses in public hospitals were in the last budget period and the current budget period. Please provide the financial information I am requesting per hospital as well as provided overall. Are there any projections for the next budget period?
From: hnzOIA
Tēnā koe,
Thank you for contacting Health NZ, Te Whatu Ora. This is an automatic
reply to confirm that we have received your email. Depending on the
nature of your request you may not receive a response for up to 20 working
days. We will try to respond to your query as quickly as possible.
Ngā mihi
Health NZ, Te Whatu Ora.
Statement of confidentiality: This email message and any accompanying
attachments may contain information that is IN-CONFIDENCE and subject to
legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use,
disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have
received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and
delete this message
From: hnzOIA
Kia ora Julia
Thank you for your request for official information, received on 2 August
2024 for:
I would like to know what the:
1) testing protocols
2) budget for testing
3) expenditure for testing
for Covid plus respiratory illnesses in public hospitals were in the last
budget period and the current budget period. Please provide the financial
information I am requesting per hospital as well as provided overall. Are
there any projections for the next budget period?
In order to provide you with the information requested, could you please
refine your request to the information Health NZ may hold in order for us
to assess whether collation of the information is feasible. Please note
that as it is currently worded, your request is likely to require a
significant amount of collation and consultation across 20 Health NZ
districts/local areas and Health NZ would need to divert personnel from
their core duties. While projects to standardise data collection and
reporting across Aotearoa are underway at Health NZ, these will take time
and they are not yet in a position to produce data, particularly in the
year recorded by local districts/areas.
To assist you, we have provided examples below of how your request for
information may be limited to produce information we hold. We believe
these examples would satisfy your request:
* - limit to single Health NZ district or local area; and/or
* - limit to information that we can provide at a national level –
without commissioning to multiple local areas.
Please note that some of what you seek is publicly available - COVID-19
Testing Protocols for example. The current budget period is the 2023/24
financial year and the current national testing protocols for COVID-19
are: [1]Operational COVID-19 Testing Guidance
Please also note there are many other respiratory illnesses besides
COVID-19. Asthma, bronchiectasis, childhood bronchiolitis, childhood
pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are
examples. Could you also please consider refining your request to
information Health NZ may hold about a specific respiratory illness. As
above, please refine this to Health NZ information rather than hospital
information.
We appreciate you are under no obligation to amend your request, but
requests that require substantial collation may be refused under section
18(f) of the Act. We want to work with you to avoid this and ensure we
are able to provide a response that best meets your needs.
Please let us know before 16 August 2024 whether you are prepared to amend
or clarify your request and, if so, how. Please note, if you do amend or
clarify your request, this will be considered as a new request for the
purpose of calculating the maximum statutory timeframe for response.
Ngā mihi,
Mark Fenwick
Government Services
[2][email address]
Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora
Statement of confidentiality: This email message and any accompanying
attachments may contain information that is IN-CONFIDENCE and subject to
legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use,
disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have
received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and
delete this message
References
Visible links
1. https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/publicati...
2. mailto:[email address]
From: Julia Schiller
Dear hnzOIA,
Yes, I'm happy to refine my request. It is Covid testing I am particularly interested in learning about.
1) Covid 19 testing protocols: you've said these are publicly available, can you point me to where I would find them?
2) Can you reveal what the overall budget for in-hospital Covid testing was for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 fiscal years, across all public hospitals? How much has been budgeted for the present financial year?
3) Likewise, what was the actual expenditure for this testing for the 2022/23 and 2023/2024 financial years?
Yours sincerely,
Julia Schiller
Things to do with this request
- Add an annotation (to help the requester or others)
- Download a zip file of all correspondence