Simeon Brown: Health Minister on the surgery waitlist's 41% decrease from peak, drop in number of people waiting over 4 months for treatment
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What are the latest health target numbers and how have elective wait times improved?
Latest health target reports out this morning, all five measures are moving in the right direction. Big gains in elective. Seventy two point six now waiting less than four months, up from sixty three point nine. Uh backlog waiting uh longer than four months is down to just over twenty thousand, lowest since november twenty one. Simeon Brown, Health Minister with us. Good morning. Good morning, Mike. Some of this is marginal. I mean technically you're right it's moving in the right direction, but some of it's fairly marginal, isn't it?
Well, overall we're seeing um our health targets move in the right direction. I think particularly the elective treatments uh for people needing surgeries, hip, knees, cataracts, uh, we're seeing seventy-two point six percent of patients now waiting less than four months, up from sixty-three point nine percent last year. So that's a significant increase.
How much of the wait‑list reduction is due to efficiency versus increased funding?
And in fact, every single district across the country has seen um a a huge increase in terms of the number of people being seen within that four months. month period and all overall a forty one point two percent reduction in the in the overall wait list for people waiting over four months. So that is a significant reduction in quite a short period of time.
How much is efficiency, how much is money?
Well, it's about two things. Uh it is about efficiency, uh, and that is whether that is uh making sure we're getting the productivity through our theaters, uh, but also outsourcing and using the private hospitals as I've spoken to you about before. Uh and I think we've done around forty thousand elective boost uh surgeries through that. Uh and of course as a government we have been putting more money into health. We've put record funding in, but it's about making sure that goes to the right places. Uh And that is frontline care for patients. That's what our priority is.
What role do private‑hospital contracts play in cutting surgery waitlists?
What role do the private contracts play? In other words, if you outsource you can get the numbers down.
They play a huge role in doing this, uh, but not the only role. Uh, you know, we want to make sure we're maximizing what's done internally by uh the frontline staff within Health New Zealand, and they have been doing a great job. Uh, but also we need to get on top of these wait lists. They ballooned under the previous government. It's unacceptable how long and how large they got. Uh, and so using all of the available capacity in the public and private system is what our priority has. been and that's what we've done to be able to get this forty one percent reduction from the peak of the number of patients waiting over four months for these surgeries.
And are these private contracts the way of the future? And if they are, do the contracts go longer and is there any downside to doing it that way?
So the uh contracts that so we have started putting in place longer term contracts, uh particularly in orthopedics and for cataracts.
Are longer‑term private contracts the future for orthopaedic and cataract surgeries?
Uh and I believe that is part of the future. We spend a huge amount of money uh in terms of outsourcing um surgical uh prictive surgeries, and whether that's under an under any government, that's always been the case. But we need to make sure we're getting value for money uh from that. Typically in the Past it's been, well, you know, the the system gets towards the end of the year and says we need to do some more surgeries, they'll go and then to make an ad hoc, go down to the local hospital and get some more surgeries done. And they obviously at that point you pay a higher price. So by planning it, taking a longer term approach, having in place agreements around how many surgeries we're going to be uh outsourcing, you get a better price for that surgery and you get much better planning for.
patients. And ultimately it's all about the patients. We need to get these wait lists down. We need to also make sure that we're getting the theatre productivity up in terms of our internal delivery of of surgeries in our hospitals, which has also been a huge focus by Health New Zealand and the frontline staff.
Do you reckon Aisha Viral in her quiet moment might broadly agree with what you've been able to achieve?
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What are the latest health target numbers and how have elective wait times improved?
0:00–0:42
2
How much of the wait‑list reduction is due to efficiency versus increased funding?
0:42–1:31
3
What role do private‑hospital contracts play in cutting surgery waitlists?
1:31–2:27
4
Are longer‑term private contracts the future for orthopaedic and cataract surgeries?
2:27–3:27
5
Why are health targets essential and how will they be maintained moving forward?
3:27–4:26
6
What lessons can other regions learn from the recent improvements in wait‑list management?
4:26–5:34
Speakers
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