Editorial: Public health system in crisis

People who are acutely unwell sit for long hours in overcrowded emergency departments. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

EDITORIAL

We hear a lot from health providers about “patient-centred care”. What this means, in essence, is that people who use health services should be treated in a way that respects their individual circumstances and helps them make genuinely well-informed choices about their own wellbeing.

Consider the national health strategy adopted by Labour in July. It envisages a national health system with its users at the forefront - accessible, flexible, inclusive. Every patient would be treated as an expert in their own condition. Services would measure their performance on patients’ experiences.

Far too often, however, patients’ experiences in our health system fall short of these laudable ambitions.

Week after week, our reporters document cases of patients and families suffering substandard treatment in services that are increasingly strained because of rising demand and crippling staffing shortages.

People who are acutely unwell sit for long hours in overcrowded emergency departments. Others live in chronic pain waiting for elective surgeries. Others languish for months on waiting lists for psychological therapies.

But you don’t have to look at the most egregious cases to see that patient-centred care is far from the reality at the coalface.

Any regular user of health services will know how stressful and frustrating it can be to find good information and to access treatment. They will know what it’s like to be patronised and confused by medical jargon. To be passed around services that aren’t joined up, recounting medical histories repeatedly to harried professionals whose reserves of empathy have been depleted by their working conditions. To get answers and accountability when something goes wrong.

This is not a knock on our hardworking nurses and doctors. Nobody goes into medicine unless they want to help people. Clinical staff are doing a demanding job in worsening circumstances. It’s hard to change the culture and mindset of an entire system when many of the people working in it are merely trying to get through their next shift without calamity.

It is, rather, a plea to the new commanders of our national health system. The logic of redesigning services to truly put patients at the heart of them is indisputable: Outcomes would be improved if people stick to the recommended treatment, hospital stays would be shorter, mental health would be improved, and there would be fewer avoidable medical errors.

The new Government will inherit a public health system in crisis. There is much to do to fix it. In this context, patient-centred care isn’t just a nice thing to have - the country’s health depends on it.