Concern over retired health targets.

More than 60 performance measures, including ED wait times and timeframes for MRI and CT scans are listed as discontinued in the health section of the Budget.

Four discontinued measures appeared again on a later page which the Ministry of Health confirmed was inadvertent, but National's Shane Reti says is a dent on public confidence.

He says targets save lives, but they need to be clearly set out to ensure accountability.

Reti says targets must be clearly at the forefront of health policy.

"It focuses attention, it focuses resources. When we look at all of the measures, immunisation, all of those that have targets, there were very clear changes for good."

Shane Reti also says targets have changed many times in recent years and now sit across multiple documents.

"It's just a mess to have targets that work. You have to have a limited number that you can measure, that you can compare to the past, that you can make accountability to the future."

The Ministry of Health says some health targets are being retired to reduce the complexity and overlap.

The Ministry says this reflects changes in the reformed system to ensure measures used in different contexts have the same definitions and data, and many of the discontinued measures will still be reported in different ways.