Kerre Woodham: What's the cost of getting the wait time down?

Apparently we've been doing ops in our hospital theatres on the weekends now for more than twenty years.  

Who knew?  

Probably the doctors, nurses, and technicians performing the operations did, and the people had their bits and pieces snipped and stitched probably did, but I didn't know until I heard the President of General Surgeons talking to Mike this morning.  

In times of surge, apparently, weekend theatres are cranked up in a bid to reduce the number of people on waiting lists. And it seems like a good idea, and it is, but it's jolly expensive because that's overtime being paid. But ultimately when you look at the numbers of people who could be working, that can't because they can't get a relatively simple operation, it makes monetary sense, and that's without taking into account the alleviation of human suffering.  

Operations might be quite simple in a surgical sense, but they can cause people a lifetime of suffering and absolutely limit their horizons, limit their lives, and limit their ability to get any sort of enjoyment of life, while they're waiting for what is a relatively simple operation.  

Of course, the real push point is the staff. Weekend theatres are only possible if staff can manage their workload. And our health care staff have had to deal with all the restrictions put around health care during the Covid pandemic. The toll of being sick themselves and having to cover for their friends and colleagues, who then become sick in their turn, and round and round it goes, and the sheer grind of trying to do the best job they can while politicians and management and yes, I accept the media, continue to get in the way.  

Chief Executive of Te Whatu Ora, Margie Apa, has issued a directive to hospitals that no person should be waiting more than a year for surgery by the end of 2023, which is a nice, neat target. We all understand a year, we get that, we can all work towards that. But what is the cost of this in terms of the strain on staff and resources?  

The departing former health Minister Andrew Little didn't put nurses on the priority list for migration when the borders finally creaked and inched open. I think he told me - I think he came on and got a bit grumpy and said look for even sake we know what we're doing, the nurses want to come. Well, they haven't arrived. You know, they may well be coming, but it's been an awfully long time that our existing nurses, technicians and doctors have been carrying the load and there's only so long a human body can go on and surely people working with bodies should understand that better than anybody else.  

The cost in terms of getting that public wait list down, I'd really love to know what impact that's having on staff right now? How many days are you working? What is needed to realistically get waiting lists under control? More technicians? More nurses, more doctors? Fewer of us getting sick, I suppose.  

There are some things that can't be avoided but many, many, many people in our health system are there with surgeries that could be avoided with changes in lifestyle before they even get to the hospital. So I think that's a really important area of health that we need to focus on. Looking at yourself Kerre, needing to get the steps up. Yes, looking at myself. 

Under a publicly funded health system what do you think is a realistic wait time? Is a year reasonable in your mind? If you're going to be getting an operation that would cost you tens of thousands of dollars if you had to pay for it privately. Is a year a realistic wait time for, say, a hernia operation or a gallbladder removal or getting your fibroids removed. What do you think is acceptable?  

In an ideal world, I would love to see a health system where the focus was on not getting into hospital, just as much as we have a focus on our hospitals right now. I would absolutely love to see people given the resources, staff put into educating people about the best possible way to avoid getting many of the diseases and the health complications that see them end up in a hospital needing surgery.  

So very much like to hear from you on this one. How much overtime do you want to do? How much time is it safe to do? How tapped out are you and how long do you think is reasonable to wait for an operation that would cost tens of thousands in the private system? 

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