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Health authorities have ditched a plan to do data matching on 111 callers in mental distress, despite ministers earlier saying it was crucial.
They had intended in August to start listening to a number of emergency mental health callers, then to match that to information held in police, health and state social agencies' databases.
The health and police ministers told Cabinet this was crucial to understand callers' needs and circumstances, in order to help them design a new system to make up for when police reduced their response to mental health callouts.
A Cabinet report by the two ministers in May said: "Health agencies and police are undertaking data matching between data collected by police, and health and social sector data, to build a stronger picture of the range of service needs present in people calling 111."
"The data currently collected about people calling 111 does not provide sufficient information about callers' social, health or other needs to design a fit-for-purpose multi-agency response and to be confident in the mix of supports required."
But on Thursday, the Ministry of Health told RNZ it had ditched the data matching.
"The ministry determined privacy and ethical concerns would outweigh the value of what could be learned about people's circumstances through data matching," it said.
The project was originally meant to be six months long, but appears to have been shortened to just weeks.
It has involved a small team with clinical oversight analysing 111 calls, such as whether they came from patients, doctors, the public or other agencies.
The ministry said it was almost finished and "did not record any identifying data".
However, that meant there was less data than anticipated for the design work, and for helping determine in future when police would still be needed.
"Future work will be scoped following the data work to understand who is calling 111 and when police are required in hospitals, particularly around the public's safety," the Cabinet minute said in May.
Ministers Mark Mitchell and Matt Doocey must report back to Cabinet in a few weeks with a design and costings for a new response system, to roll out over the next four years.
At the same time, police will lift the thresholds at which they go out to mental health calls, or transport people in distress to hospital.
"Higher-level items in later years will be informed by further data work," the May report said.
It was important to consider that up to 45 percent of 111 callers coded for 'mental distress' or for 'threaten/attempt suicide' were closed at the call centre with no further action, it said.
"Data is poor on these callers, but it is likely some of these people are repeat callers."
Mitchell and Doocey have told RNZ the transition to cope with a reduced police response was being done in a "careful and measured" way, to achieve a "seamless" transition.
The lower-risk calls, sometimes related to loneliness or stress, were up much more than the high risk ones - 150 percent to 90 percent in the past decade.
Officials said the 111 listening project used no AI, generative or otherwise.
"There is no plan to undertake further work of this kind."
All 111 calls were recorded and might be listened to for a range of reasons with approval from the Evidence-Based Policing Centre, the ministry said. Its application included "a consideration of ethics and privacy".
On Thursday, the government announced another move in the multi-agency approach to plug the gap left by police, with a new peer support service launched at Middlemore's emergency department.
"Having someone with lived experience available to support someone in mental distress can make a crucial difference," Doocey said in a statement.
Another seven hospitals would trial the peer support service, the next being Auckland City, Waikato, Wellington and Christchurch.
