Wait times

Wait times indicator dashboards talk to the length of time between the day a tangata whai ora is referred to a mental health or addiction service and the first day that tangata whai ora is seen by the service. Dashboards also provide information on time to third inscope activity – This proxy time to treatment marker was identified by contributors to the KPI Programme’s Child and Youth stream as the most probable point for therapeutic intervention to occur.

Why

He Ara Oranga (Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction, 2018), the Ministry of Health (2012), and the Health Quality and Safety Commission (2021) have identified reducing wait times as a priority to increase service accessibility for all people experiencing mental health challenges and problematic substance use. Concerningly, New Zealand continues to have one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world (UNICEF Innocenti, 2020). Approximately two-thirds of mental health conditions onset before age 25 (half before age 18 and one-third before age 14) (Solmi et al., 2021). Click here to read more evidence about this indicator.

Populations

Wait times indicator dashboards are built using criteria specific to Child and Youth populations (0-19 years), but also contain information for Adult (20-64 years) and older persons (65 and over), where services report this data into PRIMHD. Click here to learn more about PRIMHD.

All KPI Programme indicators provide demographic information by age, gender and ethnicity.

Data available through August 2025, sourced from the 26 January 2026 refresh of the PRIMHD DataMart.

Please note:

Northland has incomplete community and very little inpatient data since April 2025
Bay of Plenty and MidCentral has incomplete data for October 2025

If you have any improvement ideas or feedback please email us at mhakpi.health.nz

Indicator dashboards

National summary

District service summary

National target summary

Wait times exploration

Forensic inpatient national summary

National summary

This dashboard provides a national overview of wait times within a single financial quarter. It includes the percentage of tāngata whai ora seen within 21 days (3 weeks) and the percentage seen within 56 days (8 weeks). Both of these values are compared against the previous quarter and the same quarter in the previous year.

The distribution of wait times to both the first and third inscope activities is provided by district (both in number of service episodes and percentage of service episodes) and also by demographics (age, ethnicity, and gender).

The dashboard can be filtered by financial quarter, initial team type, and age at service start.

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District service summary

This dashboard provides individual district summaries for wait times data. It includes the percentage of tāngata whai ora seen within 21 days (3 weeks) and the percentage seen within 56 days (8 weeks). Both values are also compared against the previous quarter, the same quarter in the previous year, and the national total for the same quarter.

The distributions of wait times to both the first and third inscope activities are provided by demographics (age, ethnicity, and gender) as both a count of service episodes and a percentage of service episodes. The average days to first and third inscope activity are also compared.

Raw data is provided for crosscheck in local systems.

The dashboard can be filtered by financial quarter, division, initial team type, and age at service start.

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National target summary

This dashboard replicates the calculation of the national wait times target – Faster access to specialist mental health and addiction services 80% of people accessing specialist mental health and addiction services are seen within 3 weeks.

It provides a national overview within a single financial quarter and shows the percentage of tāngata whai ora seen within 21 days (3 weeks) and the percentage seen within 56 days (8 weeks). Both of these values are compared against the previous quarter and the same quarter in the previous year.

The distribution of wait times to both the first and third inscope activities is provided by district service (both in number of referrals and percentage of referrals) and also by demographics (age, ethnicity, and gender).

The dashboard can be filtered by financial quarter, initial team type, and age at service start.

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Wait times exploration

This exploration tool allows you to slice and dice wait times data in many different ways.

Calculations include:
– Wait time distribution (by number or by percentage of service episodes, to either first or third inscope activity)
– Average days to either first or third inscope activity
– Percentage seen within X days (to first or third inscope activity)

Filters include:
– First inscope activity type
– Client type
– Team type
as well as standard time and demographics fields

Split fields include:
– Months
– Divisions
– Age+ethnicity
– Ethnicity+gender
– Age+gender
– Age+ethnicity+gender

Drill down to raw data from any portion of the sliced data charts, to crosscheck with local systems or to explore further.

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Forensic inpatient national summary

This dashboard provides a national overview of forensic wait times. It includes the percentage of tāngata whai ora seen within 6 weeks and the percentage seen within 12 weeks. Both of these values are compared against the previous quarter, the same quarter in the previous year, and the national average.

The distribution of wait times to first inscope activity is provided by regional forensic service (both in number of service episodes and percentage of service episodes), by demographics (age, ethnicity, and gender), and by referral source.

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