How more can "Jump the Queue"
I'm not surprised to see that a man waited in hospital for a week for surgery; or that a former hospital manager can advise how to get surgery quicker.
Public Hospitals in New Zealand schedule surgery on the basis that a certain number of unplanned urgent cases will turn up on a day, and then extra capacity is allocated to elective surgery. When more unplanned cases arrive than anticipated, elective patients (who may have been prepped and be waiting to be wheeled into surgery) get sent home - the least urgent elective patient first.
As a result, you occasionally get people prepped for surgery and sent home several times - some end up on Campbell Live.
Back in the latter part of the 1990s, National used Private Hospitals to try and clear some of the backlog - to avoid the problem of elective surgery capacity being cannibalised by urgent cases.
I remember at the time staying in a Backpackers in Hokitika where the manager was telling me that he'd got his surgery in a private hospital - when told at first he thought his doctor had mistakenly thought he had Health Insurance, but he got to go private as his operation was to be done in Christchurch and it wouldn't be reasonable to expect him to drive over Arthurs Pass and back several times if his surgery got delayed.
Using the private sector for public operations works - Labour should have the guts to swallow it's pride and admit it was wrong to not renew the contracts with Private Hospitals and get more patients treated.
Public Hospitals in New Zealand schedule surgery on the basis that a certain number of unplanned urgent cases will turn up on a day, and then extra capacity is allocated to elective surgery. When more unplanned cases arrive than anticipated, elective patients (who may have been prepped and be waiting to be wheeled into surgery) get sent home - the least urgent elective patient first.
As a result, you occasionally get people prepped for surgery and sent home several times - some end up on Campbell Live.
Back in the latter part of the 1990s, National used Private Hospitals to try and clear some of the backlog - to avoid the problem of elective surgery capacity being cannibalised by urgent cases.
I remember at the time staying in a Backpackers in Hokitika where the manager was telling me that he'd got his surgery in a private hospital - when told at first he thought his doctor had mistakenly thought he had Health Insurance, but he got to go private as his operation was to be done in Christchurch and it wouldn't be reasonable to expect him to drive over Arthurs Pass and back several times if his surgery got delayed.
Using the private sector for public operations works - Labour should have the guts to swallow it's pride and admit it was wrong to not renew the contracts with Private Hospitals and get more patients treated.
posted by Michael at
9:27 AM
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