Health Minister Pete Hodgson has again called for district health boards and striking radiographers to resolve their dispute, but says the Government will not be dishing out extra cash for a settlement.
Radiographers at seven district health boards walked off the job for three days at 7am today.
The strike at hospitals in Southland, Otago, Canterbury, Hutt Valley, Gisborne, Rotorua and Bay of Plenty will mean all non-urgent surgery in those areas will have to be cancelled.
National's health spokesman Tony Ryall has said that will push more people off surgery waiting lists.
Mr Hodgson today said the strike was not very big, with only 200 or 300 staff out of a health workforce of 70,000 involved, but it would have a disproportionate effect on patients.
"I would ask both parties to keep an eye out for the fact that there are going to be some hundreds if not thousands of New Zealanders who are already sick who are going to be affected by this and that is not a good thing."
He said the parties needed to resolve the dispute as quickly as possible, but there would be no extra money coming from Government.
It was up to DHBs to resolve the contract dispute from within their existing funding.
Affected DHBs have emptied their hospitals of as many patients as they can to minimise demand on x-ray and scanning services.
Plans are also in place to move patients between hospitals as necessary.
Anne Aitcheson, the DHBs' national co-ordinator of contingency planning, today said careful preparations had been made to ensure hospitals could cope.
Considerable time had been put in by clinical staff to assess the needs of patients, she said.
"It is a lot of work for a lot of people."
However, many of the hospitals not affected by the strike were full, or nearly full, and were poorly placed to take on the extra workload.
Complicating planning, all the regions except Gisborne face a further two-day strike next week.
The strike comes as DHBs are trying to reduce their waiting lists to comply with the Ministry of Health guidelines on waiting times.
"This is just another added pressure. It's certainly not good for patients and we're very disappointed the union have chosen to act in this way," said DHBs spokesman Dwayne Crombie.
The DHBs acknowledged the striking radiographers wanted terms and conditions consistent with other radiographers, but Dr Crombie said there were a large number of greatly varying rates around the country and aligning them in one year would cost boards more than 15 per cent which was not affordable.
- NZPA
No extra cash for radiographers, Hodgson says
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