Ryall challenges health report

Health Minister Pete Hodgson has accentuated the positive in an American study that ranked New Zealand's health system highly.

"NZ health system rated among best in the world," said the headline on his press release about the six-country study by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation based in New York.

He based this on New Zealand's second overall ranking, behind Germany and ahead of Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States.

He gave less prominence to the finding that New Zealand ranked lowest for "effectiveness" - also referred to in the study as the provision of care based on scientific knowledge, the phrase Mr Hodgson chose for this measure.

The study broke effectiveness down into four categories: preventive care, chronic-illness care, primary care, and hospital care and co-ordination.

National's health spokesman, Tony Ryall, said Mr Hodgson had "picked the eyes" out of the study.

"There's been huge investment into primary care, but this study damns that investment in terms of effectiveness. New Zealand came last.

"I don't think you will convince the tens of thousands of people waiting for an operation or to see a specialist that New Zealand has got the second-best health system in the world."

The study ranked New Zealand's health system third on patient safety; second on patient-centredness; second on timeliness; second on efficiency; and third on equity. New Zealand spent the least per capita on health.

Mr Hodgson was "very pleased" with how New Zealand's health system compared internationally overall, but there was still much work to do, he said, citing preventive care, productivity and better care for children and the elderly.

Mr Ryall later said the minister was "two-faced" on elective surgery, by defending the Government's record on it yesterday, after the Health Ministry last week threatened several district health boards with intensive monitoring over lack of satisfactory progress.

Mr Hodgson had confirmed in the House that the ministry wrote to boards regarding elective surgery, but said it was to remind them of their obligations not about the surgery but how they measured it.

Elective surgery patient discharges last year were only 1 per cent ahead of 2000's figure - and behind 2001's - but the increase was 12.6 per cent when statistically weighted for complexity.