Two fundamental goals of health systems are to maximise overall population health gain (referred to as efficiency) and to minimise unfair health inequalities (equity). Often there is a trade-off in maximising efficiency vis a vis equity and the relative weight given to one goal over the other is...

In response to a need to improve the productivity and throughput of elective surgical services, one district health board (DHB) in New Zealand has introduced a ‘package of care’ (POC) in which incentive-based, risk-sharing contracts were developed collaboratively between DHB managers,...