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Radiotherapy waiting times for Auckland cancer patients are now three times the recommended guidelines but the hospital is more productive in elective surgery - a development health boss Wayne Brown says is a result of making it "like a big factory".
The chairman of Auckland district health board told Parliament's health select committee yesterday that waiting times for "priority C" cancer patients were hovering around 12 weeks.
Ministry of Health guidelines stipulate four weeks is the "maximum acceptable".
But Mr Brown told the committee the wait times would meet the guidelines by May, with additional shifts being run to meet the backlog.
The health board was also continuing to send patients to Australia for treatment, with 89 patients expected to have been sent across the Tasman by the end of the month.
Mr Brown said wait times had grown due to industrial action and "above average turnover" of staff before Christmas.
"Workforce is the biggest limiting factor in this particular issue."
The hospital had also recorded an 11 per cent productivity increase in elective surgery last year. The result was based on an international measurement system that calculates surgical productivity based on the complexity of procedures - but not necessarily in patient numbers.
"We've brought very much a production-orientated approach to the running of the hospital. Making it like a big factory as much as we could. We've tried to remove the emotion, just run it as a productive unit," Mr Brown said.
He told the Herald later that while there were extended wait times for cancer patients, the hospital was ahead of targets in some areas, such as hip surgery.
"We're so far ahead, we're having trouble finding people to get them done."
During Parliament's question time yesterday, National health spokesman Tony Ryall asked Health Minister Pete Hodgson why cancer patients were waiting longer than the ministry's recommended guidelines.
Mr Hodgson said while the guidelines were on the website, the ministry and the oncology community had "long held the view that waiting up to 12 weeks has little or no effect on the cancer outcomes" - a notion disputed by some oncologists.
"Indeed, [the waits] are suggested in some cases to be of value to patients because they need to prepare for the radiotherapy," he said.
Mr Ryall asked if a wait was "so good" for patients, why were women being sent to Australia for treatment.
Mr Hodgson said: "I didn't say it was good. I said a substantial matter analysis said it did little harm.
"There are sometimes cases where a patient set out to wait perhaps because they need chemotherapy ahead of their radiotherapy."
