Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader
25 February 2013

Alternative Healers Place Clients at Financial Risk

New Zealand First says unqualified Rongoa Maori alternative healers may well be putting patients at financial risk should they be injured during treatment.

Rt Hon Winston Peters says if Rongoa practitioners, and other alternative healers, have no clinical qualifications then they are not governed by the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003.

“The Government has placed Rongoa patients in a vulnerable position whereby they are not protected and do not have redress if they are injured during treatment.

“This is unlike physiotherapists and other medical professional groups who have to maintain professional standards to comply with the Act.”

Mr Peters says the $130 cost of each Rongoa Maori ‘client contact’ is disgraceful when compared to the $33.19 subsidy physiotherapists get paid for treating ACC clients.

“Anyone in their right mind can see this is wrong, particularly when you consider that Rongoa Maori do not hold statistics about how many individual patients they treated, or whether those treatments were successful.

“When you add in the fact that physios must provide outcome measure forms and clinical notes at their own cost, and alternative healers do not, then the true extent of the Rongoa funding rort is crystallised,” says Mr Peters.

ENDS

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