7. Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) Link to this
to the Minister of Health
How many category C patients are being offered radiation treatment in Australia?
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) Link to this
I am advised that 42 patients have so far accepted radiation treatment in Australia, about half of whom have already started.
Are consistent criteria used by the cancer treatment centres to determine which patients are offered radiation treatment in Australia; if not, why not?
There are criteria that exist throughout New Zealand. My understanding is that treatment is offered typically—probably always, I would think—to category C patients.
Maryan StreetI am advised that almost all patients in clinical categories A and B—that is, patients for whom radiotherapy has a good likelihood of being curative or is being used to treat serious complications—do receive their radiotherapy according to accepted good-practice standards.
When we have patients under Capital and Coast District Health Board being offered radiation treatment in Australia if they have been waiting longer than 8 weeks and a patient under MidCentral District Health Board being offered treatment because she has been waiting for 12 weeks, and when it is clear that the Minister’s own official has stated that radiation treatment at 4 weeks is best practice and that with treatment after 8 weeks there is uncertainty in patient outcome, why is there not a national policy that will provide certainty to patients and put a stop to this cruellest form of health care by postcode?
The member will know from her own experience that cancer patients fall into different categories and are treated differently. Different standards apply depending on the nature of the cancer.
Does the Minister think that the category C patients who have been waiting longer than 8 weeks, knowing that their outcome could be compromised, will agree with his own official who described those cases as non-urgent, when we have an example of a woman under MidCentral District Health Board who is prepared to take the offer of treatment in Australia over Christmas and New Year, and to be away from her family and grandchildren then, because she does not want her cancer to return; does the Minister not realise that the crisis is worsening and that he must act?
District health boards are acting—they are acting day by day. I would anticipate that this is, hopefully, a short-term shortage issue. It could be worsening as the industrial dispute worsens, but one hopes that it will continue to be considered to be short term. The important things are that district health boards are responsible for these decisions and that they make them on clinical grounds. There is no impediment to more people being offered treatment in Australia, if indeed clinicians believe that is in their patients’ best interests.
Dr Jonathan Coleman Link to this
Is it not illogical to have a national Cancer Control Strategy, and then to have all 21 district health boards doing their own thing in cancer care; and is this treatment-by-postcode debacle not just another example of the fundamental disconnection between the bureaucracy in Wellington and what actually happens out there in the real world?