8 May 2009
Media Statement

Complex surgery set to be cut?

Complex surgery for serious medical conditions may be cut back to achieve the Minister of Health’s new targets, Labour Health Spokesperson Ruth Dyson says.

“Yesterday the Minister of Health announced his plan to increase the number of people having elective surgery. Labour agrees that increasing elective surgery based on need is important.

“However, simply by setting a target based on discharges rather than by caseweights will mean that the easiest way for DHBs to achieve this new target is to reduce the amount of complex surgery in favour of quicker easier less complicated procedures.

“I am concerned that the Minister’s warning of sackings of board members if they do not achieve his goals means that DHBs will shy away from taking on complicated surgeries.

“Caseweighted figures reveal the true state of New Zealand’s elective surgery, as it balances surgeries that are faster against longer more complicated surgeries.

“I am seriously concerned that the Minister is intending to concentrate on providing media friendly statistics rather than concentrating on real improvements in New Zealanders’health.

“Surgery should be based on the needs of patients not because elected boards are worried the Minister will sack them if they don’t reach an arbitrary discharge figure,” Ruth Dyson said.

Surgical complexity has increased

Procedures can be assigned different weights depending upon the complexity of the procedure. The caseweighted adult elective discharge rate for Counties Manukau residents was above the NZ average in 2004/05 for the first time. The overall complexity of surgical procedures has increased by about 12% since 2000/01 for NZ and 20% for CMDHB. The increases in complexity are likely to be related to the new Clinical Priority Access Criteria (CPAC) scoring system ensuring treatment of the higher need and hence higher complexity cases first, and to the increased investment in major procedures like hip and knee joint replacement increasing average procedure complexity

ENDS

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