By MARTIN JOHNSTON
A group of cancer doctors is pushing for private sector involvement in a radiation therapy centre being devised for Auckland.
The Waitemata District Health Board yesterday directed them to draw up more detailed plans, canvassing the options of who could pay for and own the $12 million to $15 million facility.
The doctors, including Auckland Hospital medical leader Dr John Childs, favour a public-private joint venture, because of the shortage of money in public hospitals.
Their plans come as the national radiotherapy crisis, caused mainly by staff shortages, slowly abates. Breast-surgery and other cancer patients, who should have started radiotherapy within four weeks of assessment, have had to wait up to 20 weeks.
Breast-cancer women having full mastectomies rose temporarily by nearly a third at North Shore Hospital because of delays. Some Waikato patients are still going to Australia.
Demand for radiotherapy, needed by about half of all cancer patients, is rising about 5 per cent a year nationally and 8 per cent in Waitemata's patch - north and west Auckland, where the population is growing and ageing.
Auckland Hospital's oncology department, one of six cancer centres nationally, has run out of space for more radiation therapy Machines, called linear accelerators. It wants a satellite facility north of the Harbour Bridge.
Waitemata board chairwoman Kay McKelvie said she had reservations about a public-private partnership.
A spokesman for Health Minister Annette King said she had not seen details of the Waitemata scheme, but the Government had protocols for public-private partnerships in health.
Dr Childs said the facility would treat mainly public patients, but up to 10 per cent could be fee-paying foreign patients.
A public-private set-up would be similar to those for magnetic resonance imaging scanners at North Shore and Auckland hospitals.
Cancer doctors push for public-private therapy centre
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