3. Question No. 3—HealthDr SHANE RETI (National) to the Minister of HealthQuestion No. 3—Health3. Dr SHANE RETI (National) to the Minister of Health: How many people are there in total on the waiting list for first specialist assessment and the surgical waiting list?Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Every day people are added to the health waiting lists and every day people are taken off waiting lists because they have had their assessment or treatment or otherwise been discharged. I'm advised that as at 31 July 2022 140982 people are on the national waiting list for first specialist assessment and 69874 are on the national waiting list for surgical and other treatment. However the meaningful performance measure of how responsive the system is is a waiting time of more than four months. For first specialist assessment this is 37239 people and for surgical and other treatment it's 29189 people. I just note that there is a two-month delay in reporting these statistics. Accordingly 31 July is the most up to date information currently available. It should be noted that COVID-19 has caused unprecedented disruption to hospital medical services and this has been compounded by extraordinary levels of flu infection in the winter just gone. As the hospital system has dealt with the level of demand for medical services alongside COVID and flu infections over the last three years it has managed that demand by ensuring those with urgent need get their treatment and those who can be deferred have had their treatment postponed. Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand in anticipation of assuming responsibility for managing expanded waiting lists established a clinical task force in May this year to advise on steps to accelerate the reduction of waiting lists. That task force has made a number of recommendations to Te Whatu Ora to address the waiting lists and Te Whatu Ora is expected to have an implementation plan for those recommendations shortly.Dr Shane Reti: Has he or his officials given any instructions to reduce specialist waiting lists in hospitals by declining GP referrals and if so what were those instructions?Hon ANDREW LITTLE: No.Dr Shane Reti: Why then do answers to written questions show more than 1000 GP referrals to specialists in the Canterbury region have been declined every single month in the last year?Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The work that Te Whatu Ora is doing to manage waiting lists has followed the work of the specialist clinical task force following clinical guidelines and those lists are being managed down. What GPs do and the basis on which they manage their patients I cannot comment on.Dr Shane Reti: Is it the Minister's best effort that in response to an urgent letter I wrote to him this week about a 50-year-old man who is in intense pain waiting nearly a year for double hip replacements and who is collapsing almost daily resulting in bilateral fractures of his cheekbones that amongst other things the Minister's office's suggestion was that he raise a complaint with the Health and Disability Commissioner? Is that really his best effort for this man?Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As is now common with this member he of course relays a small number of facts and leaves out a number of other facts. I did receive a communication from that member—a two-sentence letter with an email message attached from a family member of I think the person he describes. That email message concluded with a very strong plea for that member not to breach the privacy of that person and publicise that person's particular circumstances because of the condition they are in. That member has breached the basis on which that communication has been provided to him.Dr Shane Reti: Does he accept that with all the money he has wasted on health restructuring and bureaucracy over the past two years he could have reduced hospital wait-lists so that Kiwis in pain like this man do not have to wait nearly 12 months for the operations that they need?Hon ANDREW LITTLE: What I can say is that this Government has increased funding for our hospital services by 44 percent since the time we've been in Government. We've not only significantly increased health spending we've increased investment in health infrastructure after nine years of underfunding of health underpaying our nurses and failing to invest in health infrastructure. I'm very pleased with the work that Te Whatu Ora is now doing to pick up the extraordinary demands placed on our system both as a consequence of COVID and because of the recent extraordinary flu season.Dr Shane Reti: Doesn't the explosion in hospital wait times show that the Minister has failed in a core duty to New Zealanders and if not what do the long wait times show?Hon ANDREW LITTLE: What that member's question shows is a complete and utter ignorance of actually what has happened in this country in the last three years. So we have had a health system that as a consequence of that member's party in Government was under-resourced its people were underpaid. We have rectified many of those problems and we have had a system that has led the world in responding to COVID and has now recently responded to the worst winter flu season in history in this country. I'm very proud of what our health workforce and our health system has done in the extraordinary circumstances they've been in and I'm very confident that Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand with the powers that it now has and the context in which it now operates will make good progress in reducing those waiting lists.