Doctors attack health system

The Government faced a fresh wave of criticism today over its handling of the health system, despite figures showing more elective operations were being done this year than last year.

Royal College of Anaesthetists chairman Graham Sharpe today called for a major overhaul of the public health system, which he told National Radio was lurching from one crisis to another.

And Royal Australasian College of Surgeons New Zealand chairman Murray Pfeiffer said despite lifts in government funding patients seemed to be receiving less service.

Their comments follow revelations this week that over 8000 people have been dumped from waiting lists in the past year.

Last week Hawke's Bay District Health Board said it was sending another 1800 patients waiting to see a specialist back to their general practitioner.

The Government has faced increasing political scrutiny over its handling of health and National's health spokesman Tony Ryall today said Labour's leadership was failing the sector.

"Labour has spent six years and billions of dollars bloating the health bureaucracy ... and during that time, Labour's over-riding obsession has been to shut down bad publicity rather than improve the delivery of health services to Kiwis," he said.

Much of the criticism has been focused on elective surgery, but Health Ministry figures show that significantly more elective operations were done in the first seven months of the 2005-2006 financial year, than in the same period last year.

The data -- available on the ministry's website -- shows a 7 per cent rise on last year.

Overall surgery volumes -- including acute cases -- are running at 97 per cent of contracted volumes.

The website notes that operation numbers usually temporarily fall below contract over the Christmas period due to staff leave.

The data shows that nationally hospitals are either close to, or meeting their contracted workloads in most areas, with the exception being some cardiothoracic and paediatric services.

Among the 21 district health boards, five rated poorly in terms of meeting their agreed operation numbers.

They were Bay of Plenty, Capital and Coast, Counties Manukau, Tairawhiti and Whanganui.

A spokeswoman for Mr Hodgson said the fact that more elective operations were being done was encouraging, but people needed to focus on more than elective surgery which was a small part of the overall health system.

The Government acknowledged there were issues with elective operations and there would always be some problems with acute surgery taking priority.

But overall the system was not in crisis and most parts were working well.

Dissatisfaction among health professionals was not widespread.

- NZPA