King Annette: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 13 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16677. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]7.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai)to the Minister of Health: What recent reports has he received of staff shortages and the impact of such shortages if any in DHBs?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration)on behalf of theMinister of Health: I have received a number of reports outlining staffing issues. The most recent revealed that although the $24-million bowel screening pilot is delivering results the biggest constraint to a national roll-out is a shortage of professionals to do the colonoscopies which would require an extra 100. I have also seen reports that the health workforce was short of 1400 general practitioners that one in four nurses at the Capital and Coast District Health Board had quit in the last year and worse that 45 general practitioners in Southland actually wrote to the Southern District Health Board about their dismay at the resignation of 12 senior doctors. These however were all in 2007 and 2008 and part of the workforce crisis legacy that that member left behind.Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order and it will be heard in silence.Hon Annette King: Could I ask through you that the Minister table that advice because there was no Health Workforce New Zealand in 2007-08.Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is very easily resolved. In effect the member is asking if the Minister was quoting from an official document for it to be tabled. If the Minister was not quoting from an official document—[Interruption] He was not quoting from an official document.Hon Annette King: Supplementary question Mr Speaker—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am trying to assist—[Interruption] Order! I am on my feet. I am trying to assist the member asking a supplementary question. I require a little bit of assistance from her colleagues.Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Your ruling was correct before of course but the members on the other side then immediately challenged the veracity of what the Minister was saying in his answer. I wonder whether should he decide to seek leave to table the press releases verifying his suggestions you would consider on this occasion that you might let him do so.Mr SPEAKER: One never knows. We will have to see what happens at the time.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I seek leave to table a document. It may not be readily available.Mr SPEAKER: I want the source of the document.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It is from a New Zealand Medical Association press release dated 28 March 2007.Mr SPEAKER: No I am not prepared to put the leave.Hon Annette King: Was he advised by Health Workforce New Zealand just over 3 months ago that there will be a shortage of nurses starting in 2015 that measures to address the gap needed to have started 2 years ago and that if changes are not made to recruitment retention and increased supply then “the future of clinical and fiscal sustainability of health services will be put at risk”?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: No I am not in a position to verify the veracity of that advice. What I would say is that I am advised that the healthy nursing workforce has increased by over 3000 under this Government and that is delivering better sooner more convenient service.Hon Annette King: Is he aware that only 600 of the 1328 new graduate nurses or only 45 percent of them secured nurse entry to practice positions 2 months ago down from 59 percent in the last cycle who got jobs—both appallingly low figures—showing little acknowledgment of the looming nursing shortage and a looming workforce crisis?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I note that we segued deftly from not enough nurses to far too many. But I would note the more recent data I have seen that suggests that considerably more than half of the nurses who graduated in 2013 now have places. That is an ongoing process and I am confident that district health boards are continuing to place further graduates.Hon Annette King: Has Health Workforce New Zealand told him that its information database’s latest reports are that there are now fewer actual midwife fulltime-equivalents in district health boards at 977.3 than there were in 2007-08 when there were 1020 fulltime-equivalents making a mockery of his commitment to strengthen the health workforce and leading to huge pressures in district health boards and on midwives?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I am not in a position to verify whether the Minister has seen reports of that nature but he certainly has seen reports on the maternity workforce in crisis where 30 percent of midwife positions were vacant as reported by the Dominion Post on 10 October 2008 under the previous Government’s watch.Hon Annette King: Has Health Workforce New Zealand told him that over the past 4 years fulltime-equivalent nursing positions around the country have increased by 4.4 percent while in-patient numbers have increased by 16 percent and that nurses are now reporting instances of care rationing increased falls medication errors and pressure injuries—all indications or red flags that point to insufficient staffing?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I am not in a position to verify that but what I can verify is that district health boards all across the country have invested very wisely the extra resources they have been given. That has resulted in several hundred thousand more first specialist assessments several hundred thousand more surgical procedures fewer people having to—well no people—Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The question was about nursing. We have moved on to wider issues that are irrelevant to the answer which the Minister said he could not verify.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member makes a reasonable point. The question was actually answered very quickly. The difficulty I have is the length of the question in the first place. If it had been a shorter question I could have dealt with it more appropriately.Hon Annette King: What does he say to new graduate Freya Head who has spent $1000 attending interviews for jobs since November has a $48000 student loan is happy to work in any practice area—still has no position—and is working 7 days a week teaching swimming and how can that be building a stronger health workforce as promised by the National Party in 2011?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I say to that correspondent that the process of recruiting nurses all around the country is an ongoing one and I wish her all the best in her search confident that a Government that has under this watch placed 3083 full-time nurse equivalents since coming to power will give her a much greater opportunity of getting a job than under any other Government.