Is the country's health system sick?

Opinion

Some patients are being kept in corridors as winter bites and hospitals battle to cope with high numbers.

The problems are nationwide and are exacerbated by illness among staff.

At North Shore Hospital in Auckland some patients are having to spend time in the corridor because of a shortage of beds.

Here is the latest selection of Your Views:

Jeffrey Winslow
Of course the health system is sick. It is a bloated bureaucracy with limited resources because the government won't fund it adequately. Add to that the DHBs' contempt for health care workers and its destabilising and demoralising impact on staff and it isn't hard to see why the country has become dependent upon overseas-trained locums to make up staffing shortfalls. Many gains could be made by rolling out a universal IT system for the public health system, cutting the red tape (and reducing the number of DHBs), empowering care givers, treating them with respect, and paying them a wage that keeps pace with inflation.Sadly, neither of the major parties seems interested in anything beyond the bottom line.

albert
Did you see the $4b that went into the health system? I didn't. When Pete Hodgson presented the Kyoto protocol, he was overjoyed with the supposedly $500m credit NZ will benefit, now it turned out to be a $500m or more deficit which we taxpayers will have to foot. Now he says $4b went into the health system, then how come there so many strikes, increase in doctor: patient ratio, longer waiting lists, etc.? Seems that the whole lot of the current govt failed their maths. Do you still trust them?

Roger: Concerned Citizen
My experience (with my elderly Mother) has shown that North Shore Hospital has been close to its current occupancy all through the year, at times, in summer, I have seen patients in the corridors.It is clear to me that the system has been run down over the years or at least has been left to get way behind the requirements.I do not have access to all the information and statistics the Government uses to plan with. I can just see the result.