New Zealand Health and Disability System Safety Strategy

The New Zealand Health and Disability System Safety Strategy (the strategy) sets a clear, shared direction for improving the quality and safety of care across the health and disability system.

The strategy focuses on system safety – looking at the whole system, rather than individual actions, to understand how everyday conditions, environments and relationships shape people’s experiences and health outcomes.

The strategy provides the foundation for collective learning, improvement and long-term change for the health and disability sector – with patients and whānau at the heart of the system. In the strategy, the word ‘patient’ refers to any person who engages with the health and disability system in New Zealand at any stage of their life.

The strategy aligns with the World Health Organization's Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030 and New Zealand’s commitment to the Mandaluyong Declaration on Patient Safety which recognises the role of system safety as a pillar of global health systems.

Read the Mandaluyong Declaration on Patient Safety

The strategy is anchored in four guiding principles that shape how the system works, improves through learning and makes decisions.

• Patients and whānau are at the heart of the system
  Safety is strengthened when patients and whānau are informed partners in care and system design. Their experiences provide vital insight into risks, gaps and opportunities for improvement.
• Collaborative relationships across the system
  Safe care depends on strong relationships across teams, organisations and agencies. Collaboration helps manage shared risks, improve coordination and reduce fragmentation, especially at system boundaries.
• Building the capacity for learning and improvement
  The system must be able to gather, share and act on insight from patients, whānau and the workforce.
• Enabling and supporting the workforce
  A supported, culturally safe and engaged workforce is essential to safety.

The principles guide focus areas that will translate into practical areas of work.

• Collective action and accountability
  Strengthening shared leadership, coordination, and responsibility for system safety across agencies and the sector.
• Continuous improvement
  Improving how harm information, evidence, and experience are brought together and used to drive coordinated system improvement.
• Enabling and supporting the workforce
  Building the capability, culture, and conditions the workforce needs to deliver safe care within a dynamic and complex environment.
• Enabling and supporting people, whānau and communities
  Strengthening lived experience, equity, access, and culturally safe care as core components of system safety.
• Information and learning
  Strengthening how the system identifies risk, learns from harm, and translates learning into sustained improvement.