The changing face of service quality in the New Zealand public health sector

Abstract The quality movement has been pervasive within public sector organisations, and the health service is no exception. A focus on safe, responsive and efficient health systems has driven quality initiatives internationally. In New Zealand (NZ), the NZ Public Health and Disability Act 2000 introduced the statutory requirement to focus on and report annually on the progress being made to improve the public health service. As an important public institution, the public health sector is of interest in the public domain. To explore the political claims of a quality service, this research draws on the normative politics of immanent critique to carry out a qualitative content analysis of media reports of organisational incidents in the NZ health sector over a six-month period to investigate the case for politically-defined quality as experienced and debated in the public domain. The disjuncture evident between political claims and institutional reality shows that quality objectives have not been achieved for all NZ citizens.