KEY POINTS:
It is more than 20 years since Colin Marchant missed out on an operation to have varicose veins removed from his left leg, because the anaesthetist was unavailable.
He's still waiting.
Since that disappointment at Green Lane Hospital, access to varicose-veins surgery on the public health system has tightened and GP Dr William Ferguson thought his 54-year-old patient was simply a victim of that.
But Mr Marchant's problem is no minor matter. He has a slight tendency to blood clots and the varicose veins have led to the potentially fatal clots developing in his leg.
They often wake him at night with painful cramps, have forced him on to blood-thinning medication that requires regular monitoring, have put him in hospital repeatedly and curtailed his ability to work.
He lost a job as an assistant golf-course greenkeeper, went on the sickness benefit for more than a year, and can now work only part-time as a carpet-layer.
Mr Marchant said: "I would like to be back at work fulltime. I work for two days and suffer for three or four."
Mr Marchant, of Taupaki, north-west of Auckland, has health insurance but existing problems are not covered by it and he cannot afford the $4500 price to go private.
Dr Ferguson said it was ridiculous that Mr Marchant could not get a publicly funded operation when the costs of his medicine, monitoring and hospital care were far higher.
He had referred him to Waitakere Hospital in January last year but received no reply.
Waitemata District Health Board management told the Herald Dr Ferguson referred Mr Marchant in 2002.
He was seen and discharged. His varicose veins had virtually disappeared.
"We have received no subsequent referral from Dr Ferguson, or anyone else, in regards to varicose veins in relation to this patient," said communications manager Bryony Hilless.
She said Dr Ferguson's 2006 letter was not a referral because it did not follow the prescribed process - it was addressed to a registrar in a medical outpatients clinic.
Because of the Herald's inquiries, a board medical official would meet Dr Ferguson to "ensure that the patient is properly referred".
Waitemata performed surgery on only two varicose veins patients last year. Typically patients have to be suffering ulcers or other complications for the public system to pay.
