Difficulties experienced by disabled people when seeing health professionals in New Zealand

2023, % of disabled people who experienced difficulties

The following information applies to all values in the table. Year: 2023, Measure: Difficulties experienced by disabled people when seeing health professionals, Unit: Percent
Category	% of disabled people who experienced difficulties
Cost	11%
No available appointments or long waiting lists (including staff shortages)	89%
Service not available locally or no good providers available	14%
Transport difficulties	7%
Appointment time not long enough	7%
Not happy with the quality of service provided/with the level of care given	19%
Not respected, believed, or listened to/treated poorly or experienced discrimination	11%
Other	8%

Definitions

A disabled person in this survey is a person with a self-reported (or caregiver-reported for children) long-term difficulty in at least one of the functional domains for their age group. Where answer options are scaled, the amount of difficulty reported needs to meet a specified threshold.

Data calculation/treatment

People who only belong to an ethnic group other than European, Māori, Pacific, or Asian, or whose ethnic group is unknown, are included in the total column only. Ethnicity data comes from Census 2023.
People with a gender other than male or female, or where gender was not provided, are included in the total estimates only.

Limitations of the data

This dataset is only representative of people living in households. ‘Households’ refers to people who live alone or with others in either private dwellings or community-based residential care facilities (these are living arrangements where people are supported to live in the community). The survey did not survey people living in aged-care facilities and long-stay hospitals or in other non-private dwellings (eg, hotels, university halls, and prisons).

Data provided by

Stats NZ

Dataset name

Household Disability Survey: Experiences and outcomes of disabled people - updated 2023

Webpage:

https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/disability-statistics-2023/

How to find the data

At URL provided, select 'Disability statistics: 2023 – experiences and outcomes of disabled people – updated'.

Import & extraction details

File as imported: Household Disability Survey: Experiences and outcomes of disabled people - updated 2023

From the dataset Household Disability Survey: Experiences and outcomes of disabled people - updated 2023, this data was extracted:

Sheet: Table 3 Health services
Range: B13:F45
Provided: 100 data points

This data forms the table Disability - Health professionals seen by disabled people in the last 12 months by type of health professional, number of health professionals seen, and difficulties experienced 2023.

Dataset originally released on:

March 31, 2025

Purpose of collection

The 2023 Household Disability Survey (HDS) was designed to provide estimates of disability prevalence among people living in New Zealand households, and information about their experiences and needs.
The HDS is an important source of official statistics about disabled people in New Zealand and helps to show how well they are faring compared with non-disabled people.
The 2023 HDS sample was selected from the 2023 Census of Population and Dwellings (2023 Census).

Difficulties experienced by disabled people when seeing health professionals in New Zealand

2023, % of disabled people who experienced difficulties

About this data

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