Scott Lynda: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Scott Lynda: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:617;Page:13258] 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 The debate tonight is about the 2002-03 financial reviews and the performance of our district health boards. During that time the district health boards had a large deficit. That deficit has improved but one has to ask what has happened in our district health boards where morale has never been lower than it is today. We see time and time again that our doctors and nurses feel that cuts are being made in all areas by a Government that said there would be no cuts and that said it would reduce the waiting lists. Well it did that! It did it by simply dumping everybody off the waiting lists. The  
Health and Independence Report 2003 
—the Ministry of Health’s own report—showed clearly that we are doing fewer orthopaedic major joint replacements and less cataract surgery than in 1999 when National left Government. 
Steve Chadwick 
: In hospitals. 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: Where else is a hip replacement done if it is not done in a hospital? Quite frankly we will not be setting up corner stalls to do hip replacements I say to Steve Chadwick. We will not have people who are to have cataracts removed lined up on the footpath. Yes we do those operations in hospitals because that is where they need to be done. But maybe that is this Government’s solution. Maybe that is what people will have to come to accept. When I went to the doctor the other day someone bailed me up and asked me whether I knew someone actually had to be crippled and in a wheelchair or so blind he or she could not get across the road before that person could get a hip or cataract operation out of this Government—and that is not far from the truth. 
The wife and the doctor of a 67-year-old farmer contacted me because they were so concerned about his situation. That man who had been a very active man had pain in his right hip. So the doctor had an X-ray taken and decided that the hip needed to be replaced. The man was put on the waiting list. He waited and waited to the point where he was on morphine and his general practitioner was saying that the man was suicidal because he had not slept for months. What he needed was an operation not continual trips to the doctor and to be put on morphine. It is no wonder that in the Budget we will see the Prime Minister dish out a bit of money for orthopaedic surgery because there are people like that all over New Zealand. Not all of them go to their MP. That man suffered in silence until somebody said enough was enough. 
We know that our hospitals’ productivity has reduced. Treasury’s own report showed immense concern that despite the fact that there has been a 6 percent increase in funding the productivity in our hospital sector has reduced. The Government can say that it has put money into primary care but—let us face it—those people who want operations do not want to know that less surgery is being done in our public hospitals than was being done in 1999 when National left Government. The fact is that a whole lot more private surgery was also being done in 1999 when National was in Government. The Capital and Coast District Health Board is a very good example of a board that has taken some bad decisions that have impacted both financially and on patients’ lives. It decided to pull Wakefield Hospital’s contract for cardiac surgery. The board said it could do it all in-house in its own public hospital sector. The only problem was that the intensive care unit could not cope. Acute cases bumped elective cases off the surgery lists and two patients who were twice cancelled for cardiac surgery died last year one of them being the 42-year-old father of two children. If he had got his surgery there is a very very good chance he would be alive today. The Capital and Coast District Health Board saw it as an achievement to have brought all surgery in-house but after careful consideration 3 years down the track it admits that it cannot do it and is finally going to re-contract with a private hospital. 
Our public hospitals do a very good job with regard to acute care but let us hope that when this Government brings the money forward for more orthopaedic surgery—which it should have done 4 years ago—the private hospital sector will be contracted. I say that not because of ideology but because of the fact that acute care does not take place in private hospitals so when elective surgery is booked it can be delivered on the day. People are not continually bumped off the surgery lists because acute cases take the surgeons the theatre space the intensive care space or the bed space. That contracting of private hospitals needs to happen. The productivity of the hospitals has gone down and it is no wonder as to why that has happened. There is nothing in the current system of 21 district health boards—