Labour appalled as Health Minister causes surgery cancellation

Reports that Health Minister Tony Ryall is directly responsible for the West Coast District Health Board cancelling patients’ elective surgery are deeply concerning, Labour Health spokesperson Ruth Dyson says.

“I was horrified to read that West Coast DHB had been unable to provide patients with outsourced orthopaedic operations because of a Ministerial directive to save money,” Ruth Dyson said.

She was referring to an article in a West Coast newspaper quoting the DHB, that waiting lists would increase following the directive. (Article attached).

“It is utterly ridiculous that a board that is struggling to recruit staff should be further hamstrung from delivering key services such as elective orthopaedic surgery to its population.

“Tony Ryall just last week wrote to District Health Boards and told them ‘we want shorter waiting times, less bureaucracy and a trusted and motivated health workforce while keeping within budget’,“ Ruth Dyson said.

“Now we learn the Minister is only really interested in budgets, not patients. His claims that he wants to reduce waiting lists have been shown up as nothing more than rhetoric.

“How is making people wait longer for surgery to save a few dollars cutting waiting lists, Minister?

“So far, under Tony Ryall, we have had four DHB chairs leave or be sacked, a health conference that would have been a prime opportunity for him to listen to the health sector cancelled, the Ministry of Health instructed not to use certain words because the Minister might not like them, and now elective surgery scrapped because of a ministerial directive to save money.

“This will be just the tip of the iceberg to come concerning service cuts from the National Government.

“Under Labour health budgets increased substantially, more people accessed GP services, 10,000 more elective surgery procedures were being done a year than when Labour came to office, and more hospitals were built or upgraded than ever before.

“I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that we can expect to see empty rhetoric and budgets put ahead of patients under a National Government,” Ruth Dyson said.

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