Wait times

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

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

Data available through April 2025, sourced from the 26 June 2025 refresh of the PRIMHD DataMart.

Please note:

MidCentral has low volumes from March 2025.
Northland and Hawkes Bay has lower volumes from April 2025.

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

Data dashboards

National summary

Te Whatu Ora division summary

National target summary

Wait times exploration

Forensic inpatient national summary

National summary

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

The distribution of wait times to both the 1st and 3rd in-scope activities are provided by Te Whatu Ora division (both in number of service episodes and % of service episodes) and also by demographics (age, ethnicity and gender).

The entire report can be filtered by financial quarter and initial team type, as well as age at service start.

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Te Whatu Ora division summary

This report provides individual Te Whatu Ora division summaries of wait times data. It includes the % of tāngata whai ora seen within 21 days (3 weeks) and the % 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 1st and 3rd in-scope activities are provided by demographics (age, ethnicity and gender) as both count of service episodes and % of service episodes. The average days to 1st and 3rd in-scope activity are also compared.

Raw data is provided for crosscheck in your local system.

The entire report can be filtered by financial quarter, division, and initial team type, as well as age at service start.

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National target summary

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

The distribution of wait times to both the 1st and 3rd in-scope activities are provided by Te Whatu Ora division (both in number of referrals and % of referrals) and also by demographics (age, ethnicity and gender).

The entire report can be filtered by financial quarter and initial team type, as well as age at service start.

View report

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Wait times exploration

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

Calculations include:
– Wait time distribution (by # or by % of service episodes, to either 1st or 3rd activity)
– Average days to either 1st or 3rd activity
– % seen within X days (either 1st or 3rd activity)

Filters include:
– 1st in-scope activity type
– Client type
– Team type
as well as the 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 your sliced data charts, to crosscheck in your local system or to explore further.

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Forensic inpatient national summary

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

The distribution of wait times to 1st in-scope activities are provided by division (both in number of service episodes and % of service episodes) and by demographics (age, ethnicity and gender), and also by referral source.

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