The rocky road to health reform: some lessons from New Zealand.

Ongoing structural change has been a feature of the New Zealand health system throughout the 1990s. As we enter the new millennium a new government is now embarking upon yet another round of reform. I look back on the past few years and consider what lessons might be learned about the process of health policy-making in New Zealand. They include the need for a clear vision about the goals of health policy, the importance of consulting with key stakeholders at an early stage, the problems of implementing change too speedily, and the need to allow sufficient time for systems to mature before replacing them with new structures.