KEY POINTS:
Senior doctors want to be paid up to $500 an hour - on top of their normal pay - for working during the junior doctors' national strike next week.
The junior doctors' union plans to strike for 48 hours from Tuesday morning, but will call off the action if a reduced pay claim it tabled yesterday is accepted by district health boards.
Mediation talks between the union and the boards began yesterday and are scheduled to resume today.
Health Minister David Cunliffe, questioned in the House by National Party health spokesman Tony Ryall, said about 800 patients might have elective surgery postponed because of the strike. Another 5500 could have specialist appointments deferred.
Mr Ryall showed a copy of pay rates proposed by the senior doctors' union, which he said were another sign of the health workforce crisis.
Mr Cunliffe said there was no crisis.
Health board chief executives are understood to have baulked at the high rates for senior doctors, but were reconsidering them last night in a tele-conference.
Under the proposal, senior doctors would be paid an extra $300 per hour for work during their normal daytime hours which they perform "without their normal level and/or quality of [junior doctor] support".
For such work beyond normal hours, and for callback telephone conversations and travelling time, they would receive $500 an hour.
For being on-call (but not working) they would be paid $250 an hour.
The union's president, Dr Jeff Brown, said these rates were "the sort of numbers" under consideration and were "certainly consistent" with locum rates for specialists of up to $10,000 a week.
"Currently GPs get $300 an hour to work in emergency departments."
The strike - like the five-day national walkout by junior doctors in 2006 - would put extraordinary pressure on senior medical officers (SMOs), with huge workloads in areas outside their usual specialties, Dr Brown said.
"There are many SMOs, having experienced the previous strike, who say almost no money would compensate for the stress of it."
During the 2006 strike, senior doctors were paid $400 extra per day, $200 an hour on weeknights and weekends and $75 an hour for being on call.
Union executive director Ian Powell said yesterday: "It's high risk work and it's been forced on people."
He dismissed as nonsense Mr Ryall's claim that the extra payments would give senior doctors up to $650 an hour.
Health boards' spokesman David Meates would not comment "on a draft that may or may not be agreed to".
Junior doctors' union secretary Deborah Powell said her union's new offer yesterday, which she hoped would avert the strike, was similar to the pay settlement being considered by the senior doctors.
