Aucklanders losing out on hernia ops

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

Waikato liver patients are helping to deprive Aucklanders of hernia operations and expanded preventive healthcare, the city's health board has been told.

Surgeons from the deficit-plagued Auckland City Hospital say they are now operating on all Waikato patients needing liver surgery.

The sole Waikato Hospital surgeon who had been doing liver operations left in March for the private health sector.

Previously, Auckland carried out just the complex Waikato cases. It also still takes many upper North Island cases and some from the South Island.

The Auckland District Health Board has long complained of being underpaid for expensive treatments such as kidney transplants.

Yesterday, the clinical director of general surgery, Wayne Jones, said liver "re-section" operations cost it on average $26,000 each, but it received only $12,000. The operations were mainly to remove tumours from cancer patients.

The loss in the year to last July was more than $850,000 on 61 patients - 80 per cent of whom lived outside the Auckland health district.

Associate Professor John McCall, an Auckland Hospital liver surgeon, said the number of Waikato cases - previously six to 10 a year - had crept up since the Waikato Hospital resignation.

A liver re-section was an all-day operation, taking as much theatre time as five gall-bladder removals done by keyhole surgery.

In effect, he said, Auckland patients were missing out on those gall-bladder operations.

Mr Jones said his department had stopped doing hernia repair operations 18 months ago, except for severe cases, partly because of the liver surgery losses.

He was summoned to address the health board because his department in the new hospital is a key loss-making area whose deficit is worsening by the month despite attempts to rein it in.

It reached $8.5 million last month, bringing it to $42 million for the past 10 months - $20.8 million over budget.

The Waikato health board's acting hospitals manager, Jan Adams, said she hoped to appoint a new surgeon who could do liver operations.

"Auckland is recognised as the liver unit of the highest quality."

Prices for highly specialised services were set nationally, she said, and Waikato paid Auckland for liver surgery in line with these.