Dr Gerard Zwier
Having completed his academic studies at Auckland University in 1982 (PhD Psychology), Gerard Zwier was employed by Intercontinental Medical Statistics (now known as IMS-Health) until 1993.
First as Marketing Manager (8 years), then General Manager of the Market Research Division (2 years) and finally Managing Director of the company (2 years). During those years he was responsible, amongst other projects, for the successful implementation of programmes that monitored GP prescribing habits, hospital and retail drug purchasing and a survey research division which focused on healthcare organisations. Under his direction, IMS (NZ) Ltd won the contract for the then nationwide CCMAU survey on the Public Perception of Hospitals.
Since leaving IMS in December 1993 to work as an independent consultant in Healthcare Management, he has operated on contract for various departments and regional offices of the Ministry of Health, universities and DHB organisations such as Counties Manukau (CMDHB). There he assisted senior management with business objectives and strategic planning and lead the Accreditation Team for three years as “Project Manager”. Apart from his continuing interest in CQI and Quality Management in general, Dr Zwier also became increasingly involved with the development and implementation of patient and staff surveys. The survey research experience he gained while at IMS proved to be very useful in improving the patient questionnaires and other surveys of organisations such as CMDHB.
In 1999 he set up Health Services Consumer Research Limited with the intention to survey not only hospital inpatients and clinic outpatients, but also primary care patients visiting GP practices.
During 1999-2000 Dr Zwier made a significant contribution to the Ministry of Health working party to develop national guidelines on how to implement Patient Surveys and has since run various workshops for clinical staff to assist in the interpretation of patient and staff surveys. His interest in comparing performance measures between District Health Boards has led him to publish a number of articles on how best to benchmark patient satisfaction: