Cancer centre delay laid on Labour

The National Party says cancer patients on the North Shore are missing out on closer-to-home treatment because the Government rejected a private company's bid to provide radiation therapy.

National health spokesman Paul Hutchison said the scheme could be running now if not for Labour's ideological opposition to private involvement in public health services.

But Health Minister Annette King denies such opposition, and ever receiving the private proposal.

Health services company Shorecare Health wanted to finance a $12 million to $15 million radiation therapy centre at the North Shore Hospital campus. It would have treated public and privately paying patients in order of clinical priority.

Hospital breast surgeon Dr Richard Harman, a director in the Shorecare group, said the public-private scheme, mooted in 2002, had collapsed under Health Ministry opposition - an assertion echoed by Waitemata District Health Board chief executive Dwayne Crombie.

The Crown intends to pay for the new centre itself. It was to be built and operating by late 2007, but the Auckland District Health Board's regional cancer centre in Grafton now believes it has sufficient patient capacity, because of changes in clinical practices, to postpone the North Shore satellite facility until July 2009.

Radiation therapy delays still exist, but are far less than the crisis levels that forced the Government to send hundreds to Australia until last November.

Dr Harman said the postponement was "very sad for people on the North Shore. The access to oncology services is already very poor, so we feel it's a real setback for this campus not having oncology services".

National wants greater private sector involvement in providing publicly-funded services, but Dr Hutchison said Labour's ideology prevented its taking that path.

He said Prime Minister Helen Clark and the Health Minister stopped the private involvement in the North Shore scheme - at a time when the Auckland board's $100 million deficit hampered expansion. The lack of the facility curtailed patient choice and access to treatment.

Annette King said the proposal never came before her or the PM. At the time, it would have damaged public services by competing for radiation therapists during a shortage, although the Government had increased the number in training.

And Labour supported appropriate private provision of public services, she said. It occurred in many areas, including orthopaedic and cataract surgery.

Her spokesman said the ministry told Shorecare of the protocol for public-private health partnerships.

The spokesman said Auckland's health board chief executives subsequently decided to plan for a state-owned facility and nothing further came to the ministry about private involvement.

Treatment delays

* June: 152 priority C cancer patients nationally had waited longer than the guideline four weeks to start radiation therapy after seeing a radiation specialist. Eleven of them had waited eight weeks or longer. At the Auckland Cancer Centre, 61 had waited more than four weeks.

* July 2001: 285 patients nationally had waited more than four weeks after referral, of whom 199 had waited longer than six weeks.

* 2001-2004: 436 patients nationally were sent to Australia for treatment because of New Zealand's delays. None has been sent since last November, "due to improved capacity in New Zealand".

Sources: Minister and Ministry of Health