Hospitals now rejecting patients from waitlists due to BMI - after 80 year olds rejected due to "lack of resources"
State of Health: Update
Kiwis Disallowed From Waiting Lists Based on Arbitrary Measures
Wellington hospital are now rejecting patients from specialist waiting lists due to BMI (body mass index).
This article from Rachel Thomas for The Post says it all (emphasis mine):
A group of Porirua GPs are sounding alarm bells after patients with body mass indexes (BMI) of more than 35 were declined specialist appointments at Wellington Hospital and fear it is a tactic to manage waiting lists…
One of the Government’s five health targets aims to get 95% of patients waiting fewer than four months for a first specialist assessment - which is what these patients are being referred for.
Latest results show 68% of Wellington patients met that criteria.
No one from Health NZ - Te Whatu Ora would be interviewed, but in written statements, clinical planned care lead Derek Sherwood denied the claims, saying “referrals are not declined on BMI alone”.
But in a rejection letter The Post has seen, a patient this month was declined a referral from a general surgeon with BMI listed as the sole reason.
Leading GP Dr Bryan Betty .. said the trend was increasing.
What’s also extraordinary, but no longer abnormal in the above, is Health NZ’s refusal to front up for an interview.
And then Sherwood’s apparent ease of trying to deceive Kiwis through a written statement. His assertion is immediately debunked.
Another Wellington GP said of the rejected patients:
“It means they are missing out on a knee replacement and then being bed bound and not able to work.”
“Sometimes that word from a specialist is that extra motivation they need to lose weight.”
This is not the first time that Health NZ’s target of lowering wait lists for Luxon’s KPI involves rejecting patients.
E.g. an 80 year old patient with debilitating hip pain was rejected from orthopaedic wait lists in November.
Last year, Labour’s Health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall warned the government was trying to “game the targets … where actually the problem is just being swept up under the rug and people aren't getting the care they need.”
And Lester Levy said multiple times, after he got the Health NZ Commissioner job, that reducing wait lists was his number one priority.
The goal of pleasing his boss shows.
Government steamrolling public health while shifting ‘business’ to the private sector
I’ve mentioned this before - and perhaps I’m the only person that’s alarmed - but the under-reported news that Health NZ is choosing to cancel cheaper, at-cost surgery contracts and move them to far more expensive, private facilities is extraordinary.
In this case, they’ve abruptly ended their relationship with Canterbury Charity Hospital Trust’s and are transferring the work to places such as Christchurch’s flash Forte Health facility with its carpeted floors, Sky TV, and pressed duvets.
Does this sync up with this government’s professed care for taxpayers’ dollars?
Or are we trying to help the private sector investors accelerate their ROI (return on investment)?
It should be obvious but I’ll still say it:
Where you take the procedure is where you put the investment - so the more the government moves surgeries to the private sector, the more they can build up their capacity, skills, infrastructure- while the public system languishes & starts to crack.
The number of publicly funded in-patient surgeries outsourced to private facilities currently stands at just over ~10% or so. Last year, Reti appeared to indicate it would rise.
And while the private sector say they are ready to help, RNZ journalist Ruth Hill, quoting expert, reports:
[There is] “no evidence that private healthcare increases capacity in the public system - in fact, the opposite is true.”
Private providers are undermining public system by poaching staff and diverting resources
Taxpayers were subsidising private providers, by paying the ongoing cost of upskilling part-time public specialists and providing emergency back-up.
"If there's a cardiac event on an operating table, they will routinely be put in an ambulance and sent to the public sector, because they can't deal with it themselves."
As National fiddles, Rome burns.
In the September quarter of 2024, nearly 800 surgeries were cancelled and postponed in Auckland and Hamilton hospitals alone.
Christchurch ED is no longer able to cope - with 77% of patients not seen on time.
Health NZ were in damage control, as usual, while the hospital urges patients to avoid ED, bar for life threatening circumstances.
Nothing to see here, they claim….
After Whangarei hospital hit headlines for “Code Black” last August - code for similar overstretched EDs with severe understaffing and/or over capacity - Health NZ did the pragmatic thing for itself under National:
Yes.
It cancelled the CONCEPT of Code Black the very next month.
Instead of addressing the underlying imbalance of doctors' and nurse staffing, capacity and burnout, it removed the ability of its hospitals and staff to say the words “Code Black” to media.
Only under a week ago, Simeon Brown was touring Christchurch hospitals as the new Health Minister.
His first real job appears not to be to address any of the systematic, serious issues other than to sell privatisation to Kiwis, and kill off Health NZ’s leadership team - even as he was told the REAL answer is funding, after National’s lowest real spend budget in Health in a century.
Dunedin Hospital
To be fair, Brown announced Dunedin Hospital would proceed after 35,000 people marched to demand their promised hospital in September.
The response has been called the “least worst option” with reduced capacity, but room to grow. It will be built on the site of the former Cadbury factory - which was purchased by Labour.
However, ODT reports the Dunedin hospital build remains mired with significant question marks.
Pete Hodgson: “There is no way that the figure of $1.88b will be the final figure. It suits the government to say that, but it is inevitable that it will be more than that.”
"In addition, the political pressure to stay within $1.88 [billion] means it is likely people are playing fast and loose with variables, such as contingency costs."
Specifically: no contract exists, no programme Director has been assigned to the job, questions about budget and timeline abound, there’s a lack of expertise in Health NZ on contract negotiations after the government removed their experienced hospital infrastructure leader without explanation, and earthquake resistance is now a question as the government demands lower costs.
Hundreds of experienced engineers are also fleeing the country which futher complicates hospital infrastructure projects - a point that while alarming, was signaled by Auckland CRL leader Sean Sweeney, mid last year.
[Sweeney has now been poached by Ireland, but warned NZ Kiwis would pay a heavy price1 for their loss of talent from cancelling infrastructure projects]
Thank you Mr Bishop, Brown, and Luxon.
A life of service and taxes - and Kiwis are being squeezed into an expensive, transactional, private healthcare pipeline to enrich the wealthiest of us, by a government owned by libertarian and wealthy interests that has always pushed for privatisation, as it intentionally kneecaps public health.
Expect Nicola to boast about her record investment in Health later this year, with plenty of fancy PR slogans.
Listen - but hold judgement.
Their plan has been a long time coming.
Recommended Article:
Lester Levy The Fiction Man - Ian Powell
Ian Powell looks at Lester Levy’s claims that he “turned around” North Shore Hospital’s Emergency Department and points out it’s fiction.
When overlaying fact in health systems with fiction morphs into embellishment
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Recent Media
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Kiwis return from overseas weight loss surgery with life-threatening complications (RNZ)
Struggling Christchurch ED asks patients go elsewhere unless it's 'life-threatening'
Related Reading:
And:
A Letter To Brian Tamaki
Personally, I think Chris Bishop never got the scrutiny he deserved for the loss of 13,000 construction jobs and some of our most qualified professionals due to his ideological need to privatise social housing and implement “user-pays” infrastructure.
Oh so they’re literally just killing fat people. If your BMI is higher than 35, you are,
according to this government, too fat to live.
(But also Bariatric waitlists are so far over capacity you’ll never get on them even if they didn’t start at >40, pharmac won’t fund your weight loss drugs because of price, and we also won’t ban fast food advertising because fuck you, die. This is really your own fault, you know.).
Never mind the fact that BMI is a non-accurate measurement and bias in medicine has been evidenced to be understating the fact that people with a higher BMI recover BETTER during hospitalisations. (Which is called a paradox by medicine because being fat means that NOTHING about you should be healthier or better than being skinny!) But you won’t hear about that because it’s all about the increased risk.
They literally couldn’t do this to old people. Winston Peters is in Parliament protecting them and also we have age discrimination laws that make this a grey area under BORA (if you’re already meeting legislated age thresholds, that is). But fortunately for Health NZ being fat is not a protected human right.
Maybe it should be.
Thanks for highlighting this Health NZ reporting.
It’s fair to say we now have The Hunger Games Public Health System—may the odds (and BMI) be ever in your favour.
Who could have predicted that the new Health KPIs would be gamed? Fortunately, we’ve had practice calling out such tactics. Full credit to the five Porirua GPs for shining a light on this.
Meanwhile, Health NZ leadership is spinning furiously and avoiding scrutiny—at least, those who are still in their roles.
Brace for more spin from the Minister, Commissioner, and Health NZ leadership in 3, 2, 1… It’s a disgraceful show of disrespect to the thousands of dedicated Health NZ employees who turn up every day to serve their communities.
We must keep holding the Coalition of Cruelty and their ‘mates’ to account.