Eight Whanganui patients benefit from hurry-up on surgical waiting times

Te Whatu Ora has directed health districts to get a move-on with surgical waiting lists. Photo / Bevan Conley

Eight people in Whanganui who have been waiting for surgery for more than 12 months will be booked in by the end of August.

The bookings are the result of a series of directives sent by the Planned Care Taskforce to health districts nationwide to attempt to fix the large number of people waiting for surgery.

In response, Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand sent a letter to its 20 health districts to "actively tackle" long waiting lists by making sure the almost 7500 people who had been waiting longer than 12 months for surgery were given a booking by August 31.

Te Whatu Ora Whanganui chief operating officer Katherine Fraser-Chapple said eight patients in the Whanganui region had been waiting more than 12 months for surgery.

She said the directive sought to ensure the highest priority bookings would continue to sit with people who required care urgently, and the bookings from the directive would not come at the expense of those requiring urgent surgery.

In line with this, the eight people had been reviewed on the severity of their conditions and would be booked by medical priority. The directive was to have the patients scheduled for treatment but not necessarily treated by August 31.

Fraser-Chapple said the directive could put more strain on Whanganui's health system to a degree, and Te Whatu Ora Whanganui would use the regional capacity of other health districts because it was available to accommodate the patients.

Te Whatu Ora also set a deadline of September 30 for its health districts to book an appointment for 4000-plus people who had been waiting for a first specialist assessment (FSA) for more than 12 months.

Fraser-Chapple said 15 people in Whanganui were in that FSA timeframe and 11 of them had been booked for an FSA in August and September.

To further help patients and the health system, Fraser-Chapple said planning was under way to increase the amount of care provided by GPs, nurses and allied health professionals, and to look at the resources that would be required to do this.

"This would release senior medical officers working in hospitals and specialist services to provide care others cannot."

She said the plans being developed would not replace health professionals with a non-clinical workforce.

"Some of the plans being developed do seek to engage highly skilled clinical
workforces, such as nurses and allied health professionals, to carry out tasks they
currently might not."

Te Whatu Ora was also exploring the steps required to expand the use of successful clinical pathways to areas that did not use them, Fraser-Chapple said.