Dear Health New Zealand,
This request seeks information currently held by Health New Zealand, including information inherited from the former District Health Boards (DHBs) and the former Ministry of Health operational units.

Where the specific data requested resides in legacy systems (such as regional instances of Titanium software previously managed by individual DHBs), please consider this a request for data from those source systems

1. Historical Coding Capabilities:

Prior to 2022, what specific clinical code (if any) was mandatory for Community Oral Health Service (COHS) therapists and private dentists to record a diagnosis of 'Dental Fluorosis' in patient records that would be centrally reported to the Ministry of Health?

2. SNOMED CT Implementation:

On what date was SNOMED CT (specifically code 51225000) fully integrated into the 'Titanium' software used by the Community Oral Health Service as a mandatory field for recording enamel defects?

3. Dataset Existence:

Does Health NZ hold any centralised dataset containing diagnostic rates of dental fluorosis (by severity) derived from routine clinical encounters (not ad-hoc surveys) for the years 2010–2024? If yes, please provide the total count of fluorosis diagnoses recorded per year."

4. Private Dentist Reporting:

Is there currently any requirement for private dentists to report diagnostic codes (such as SNOMED CT 51225000) to Health NZ, or is reporting limited to claiming subsidies for treatment provided?

Yours faithfully,

Alisha Riley