Private hospitals to bid for overflow

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Some public hospital patients will be bumped up surgery waiting lists after a health board voted yesterday to spend nearly $500,000 on operations in private hospitals.

The Waitemata District Health Board, struggling with excessive delays for elective surgery, will ask private hospitals to bid for the 170 operations.

The operations are hernia repairs, female sterilisation and removal of gall bladders, wombs, thyroid glands and haemorrhoids.

Of the country's 21 health boards, Waitemata in April had the highest proportion of eligible patients who had waited longer than the benchmark six months for treatment.

Waitemata chief executive Dwayne Crombie said yesterday he was disappointed that North Shore and Waitemata hospitals had done about 820 fewer non-urgent operations than the board's target of nearly 6900 in the past 12 months, although they had still managed to do about 840 more than in the previous year.

There were many reasons for failing to meet the target, which was 10 per cent higher than the previous year's, including the rising number of patients needing acute medical care and the fact that Waitakere's re-opening as a full general hospital, including an emergency department, will not occur until next February.

The $485,000 for the extra operations would come from savings in various areas, including the controversial increase to the dispensing of three-months' supply of medicines to many patients by community pharmacists.

Dr Crombie expected that even with the extra spending, the board would remain within its Government-approved $16 million deficit.