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The Cancer Society of NZ and Bowel Cancer NZ are worried around the government’s move to pause surveillance colonoscopies for bowel cancer.
Manawhatu and Whanganui are first off the rank.
852 patients remain on the waiting list there, so the government - under Lester Levy’s direction - is doing what we’ve seen before:
They are pausing procedures, and presumably, holding people off of wait lists.
Yes - pausing people joining medical waiting lists (one of Luxon’s self-defined health KPIs) isn’t new under NACT1.
In late November, it was revealed Health NZ was refusing to add desperate and in-pain patients to hospital wait lists.
That includes ex-Palmy North Mayor Heather Tanguay, 80, who suffers debilitating hip pain and who her GP desperately tried to help - to no avail:
The hospital wrote:
"This decision [to decline you] is forced upon us by a lack of sufficient resources to enable us to see all patients referred to us within the limits of the Ministry of Health waiting time targets."
Translation [mine]:
The waiting time metrics are deteriorating, so Health NZ asked us to stop people from joining - no matter how desperate or clinical the case.
A life of service — and this is what many Kiwis are seeing.
Last week, Health NZ’s group director, MidCentral, Sarah Fenwick, said of the colonoscopy pause:
"We will be reviewing the waitlist monthly .. and we will have an update for patients on our next steps in May 2025."
A promise … about an update - 5 months away.
Here is one impacted patient, and remember: bowel cancer is a preventable disease, and the second most deadly cancer in Aotearoa New Zealand -
And today reports are in that it’s staffing and resource gaps that are behind the colonoscopy pause.
Could it be the months of doctors and nurses whistleblowing about frontline freezes and staff and budget cuts?
These have been consistently ignored and denied by the sitting government.
And met with farcical, fanciful excuses by their main front-man - private healthcare investor and Health NZ Commissioner, Lester Levy, who last year pleaded multiple times for Kiwis to pray for him, as he set about slashing years of investments, healthcare efficiency, and staffing in out health system.
And saying having no doctors in hospitals overnight wasn’t his problem, despite risks to patients and nurses.
And -
Could it be Shane Reti’s “aspirational” $2bn of cuts that is rapidly deteriorating our public health system?
And that is after the deficit was no-where near as bad as Luxon/Reti claimed last July - coming in at just over $700m (half of what they said) - because among other reasons - well, Health NZ hired much needed clinical nurses.
And is it a deficit if it’s intentionally underfunded in the first place? …
Still - nothing is stopping Lester the investor.
Or the other private healthcare investor Shane Reti, or a cashed up Christopher Luxon (3 properties liquidated last year) as Luxon boasted about talking to investment bankers about privatisation options for NZ’s assets.
And last month it was revealed there’s going to be a new “reset” of Health NZ soon to be announced.
Reti and Luxon are still tap dancing around their election promise on bowel cancer screening - apparently it will possibly come true "within the next year or so"
Possibly for election time?
I wouldn’t put it past them - or them counting on the poor political memory bank of Kiwis.
PS
Yesterday I spent some time sharing the bowel cancer updates on social media. And was roundly informed by multiple people that it couldn’t possibly be true
i.e. too many Kiwi are not aware of the government’s ongoing attack on our public health system, capacity, services and professionals.
PPS
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor shows concerns about the country’s healthcare/hospital system are rising in terms of their significance; up from 27% of respondents in February 2023, to 31% in May 2024 to 41%.
PPPS
Finally, in the latest Health Select Committee (December 2024 - video above) - Lester Levy and his near $1m paycheck Health NZ CEO Maggie Apa show scant regard for the clinical realities - focusing only on the “manufactured” crisis & deficit and waving charts and statistics as if they mean anything to sick Kiwi and their families.
The clinical situation is worsening as a result of their austerity cuts:
Nearly 800 surgeries cancelled & postponed at Auckland, Hamilton hospitals in the September quarter primarily due to resource shortages, 1500 Health NZ job cuts pending on top of 500 voluntary redundancies - and more to come, critical cardiac surgeries delayed in Waikato by up to 8 weeks, elective surgery wait times ballooning to 12 months and more from staff shortages and burnout, and even heart attack patients waiting more than 1 month for surgery.
That’s on top of us losing out on top and rare global talent e.g. cancer doctors due to hiring freezes, and the aforementioned stops on bowel cancer surveillance in two regions and cancelling the Maori/Pasifika bowel cancer pilot despite disproportionate deaths/sickness in those communities.
And the revelation last month that Lester Levy and Apa are sitting on another secretive Health NZ “reset plan” is going to be soul destroying for a workforce already suffering from burnout, cuts in systems and processes, frontline health staff being asked to make beds and work on reception, and months of battling for staff and job cuts.
This is not fiddling while Rome burns; it’s burning our public health systems and professionals while claiming saviourship and asking for a prize on the podium.
Shame, Lester Levy and Shane Reti and the entire National Party.
Our health is not your wealth.
Act like it - before it’s too late for ordinary Kiwi
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