KEY POINTS:
Nearly 1000 patients in Auckland face at least a week-long wait for treatment as a clearer picture of the impact of the strike by medical laboratory workers begins to emerge.
Elective surgery has been hardest hit, as blood work and transfusions will be unavailable when the 1200 union members, including Blood Service workers, walk off the job from 8am today.
Question marks also loom over patient safety during the strike, with the association representing senior doctors blaming the health boards for "creating a debacle with serious risks of permanent disabilities and possible deaths".
Contact between union advocates and a mediator continued last night although the strike will still continue.
Ian Powell, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said the district health boards (DHBs) had bungled the wage negotiations.
"Their first bungle was to get the bright idea that laboratory workers would agree to an erosion of their salaries by only offering increases noticeably below inflation. Their miserable attitude makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus.
"If this wasn't enough, the DHBs then adopt a minimalist approach to the plans they agreed to for the provision of life-preserving services during the strike."
The Employment Relations Act requires an agreed plan to treat serious and emergency cases, and also for an adjudicator with clinical expertise to resolve any differences.
"Resolving life-preserving plans was always going to be very difficult for laboratories because their testing is often necessary to determine whether a patient's condition is life threatening or not," said Mr Powell.
"But in their folly the DHBs have agreed to plans which make this problematic and which also exclude the risk of permanent disability to patients such as loss of limbs," he said.
"They even failed to use their agreed clinical expert to determine these difficulties."
Auckland District Health Board has called off 313 elective surgeries and Counties-Manukau 400.
Waitemata said 160 procedures had been put off, Waikato has called off under 50 and Northland has had to call off 20 scheduled surgeries.
Do you know someone whose surgery has been cancelled because of the strike? Please email the Herald's newsdesk.
