The health minister wants as much planned care as possible to be delivered in partnership with the private sector. File photo. Photo: Supplied / LDR
The Health Minister is unlikely to achieve his goal of completing an extra 10,000 elective surgeries by June, the senior doctors' union says.
Simeon Brown announced a major overhaul of the public health system on Friday, including reinstating a board and "partnering" with the private sector.
He said Health NZ would spend $50 million by the end of June, with the aim of reducing the backlog of patients waiting for elective surgeries.
In the long term, the minister wants as much planned care as possible to be delivered in partnership with the private sector, freeing public hospitals for acute needs, with longer term, multi-year agreements with the private sector.
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists' executive director Sarah Dalton told Nine to Noon the minister's goal of completing an extra 10,000 elective surgeries by June was bold, but unlikely to be achieved.
She said that missed the fact that many doctors worked in both public and private hospitals.
"Particularly the surgeons and anaesthetists who would be the key workforce to deliver on this goal. Them doing more work in private means they are not doing any work in public during that time. So it may free up public hospitals, but they won't have the staff to do the work the minister would like to be done," she said.
Private Surgical Hospitals Association president Blair Roxborough said the private system had the capacity to expand and take on most of the country's elective surgery, although the workforce would need to expand.
"If we as a country address that together, with all the various agencies working together, we can expand and provide better outcomes for all of New Zealand," he said.
Roxborough said currently contracts with private hospitals were arranged individually and usually for a year.
He said longer contracts, as suggested by Brown, would be beneficial because they would allow for better planning and let private hospitals do more to relieve the pressure on the public hospital system.
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