Kuriger Barbara: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKuriger Barbara: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5546. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a pleasure to be taking a call this afternoon. I am really proud to be part of the Health Committee and it is really pleasing to note therecord $15.9 million budget. You know the key thing about this is that National believes that all New Zealanders and their families should have access to timely quality health-care no matter where they live. A really key feature of the estimates going forward is actually putting things into medical services that are much closer to home. It is important for people to be close to home. If we think back a few years ago we were having women with breast cancer going to Australia. That is a most stressful time for a woman and it is so important that now they are able to have that service in their country and in their community.I am really proud of some of the things that are happening to take the services closer to home. Even in the last few days we have seen some announcements that have come out around the estimates so not only are they estimates but they are actually falling into action. One that I am really pleased to be part of is the mobile surgical services contract which has been extended. That is a great bus that has gone around and to date approximately 20000 New Zealanders have been treated on this bus and received over 45000 hours of education. So not only is it actually treating the patients but it is going around and actually educating health professionals on the road. What it has done is it has reduced the waiting times for patients and improved the access to health for those people in rural and remote communities.It was really interesting because in renewing that contract there was a review prior to renewing it and the professional development training provided to health professionals has been described as relevant and engaging. The interactive digital video equipment enables collaboration with health professionals in other parts of the country and overseas. Not only are we training people on the spot but we are actually collaborating between various areas of the country and we have links overseas where people can share information and understand how to do it better. So I am really pleased that 24 rural towns are actually receiving this service and will continue under the proposed health estimates to receive this service in a 5-week cycle where more people can have access.It is also really important that an extra $846000 is now going into funding 20 more nurse practitioner trainees. Currently there are 145 nurse practitioners in the country. I know that we were doing some work looking at some legislation last week where we spoke about changing some of the legislation so that we could give wider roles to some of these nurse practitioners because up until now it has been the prerogative of the doctors to be able to do things that highly qualified nurse practitioners are able to do.There again we are working on this whole theme of it being closer to home having more people out in the community. It means that people do not actually have to always travel to the bigger hospitals and it also means that some of those people in the community can upskill themselves to become nurse practitioners which means that they do not necessarily always have to travel to certain points in big hospitals either.One of the future things for health is actually creating it closer to home for people and I think that is a really important thing. It is also about working on elective surgery. So far there is 37 percent more elective surgery. That means 44000 people up until now and we are going to continue to work on this in the future. It just means that those people do not have to sit around and wait for these operations. I am really pleased with that.The Minister of Health mentioned that we have under-13s being able to get to the doctor for free. That means that they will go sooner and they will get diagnosed sooner which means the chance of them being hospitalised when they do go is less. That actually means that they will end up being closer to home as well and will have more time with their parents.Also up until now in the tracking of full immunisation of children 94 percent of 8-month-olds are fully immunised. That means that we are on track for 95 percent and the Government is really really proud of that—very proud.