3. Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) Link to this
to the Minister of Health
What did he mean when he said: “There are many reasons for increased numbers at emergency departments, one of which, paradoxically, is the improvement in service.”?
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) Link to this
What I meant can be found in the two sentences after that quote. Let me read the member the full quote. It had come as a reply to a question in the House a couple of months ago from Barbara Stewart of New Zealand First. She had asked a question regarding after-hours general practitioner services and emergency departments. I had replied: “There are many reasons for increased numbers at emergency departments, one of which, paradoxically, is the improvement in service. After-hours arrangements vary from district health board to district health board and include general practitioner services being co-located alongside emergency departments in some cases. It seems to work quite well for some district health boards.” That is what I meant.
When the Minister listed yesterday a number of hospitals that are not providing an adequate service, why did he leave out Palmerston North Hospital, where an 8-year-old girl who broke both her arms in a schoolyard accident waited 5 hours even to get painkillers?
I have said to the member on many occasions that I am not able to answer questions around the details of individual cases. I am really happy to look into that case should the member wish to raise it with me—perhaps in writing, so that I have the young person’s name. I am very happy to do that. Indeed, anyone is entitled to lodge a complaint if he or she feels that the service received in an emergency department or any other part of a district health board is not up to scratch.
Has the Minister thought about the impact of the emergency department crisis not only on the patients but also on the medical staff working in our emergency departments; and are reports correct that at 1 o’clock this morning, with patients lined up top to tail on trolleys in corridors at North Shore Hospital, a woman clinician collapsed, saying: “I can’t do this any more.”?
I have not heard of those reports, and I certainly hope they are not true, because it would be a very serious matter if a clinician collapsed while on duty. I will say, however, that 12 years ago at that same district health board, at the same time of the day—1 o’clock in the morning—an 80-year-old with a broken arm was thrown out of the hospital and told to make her own way home, in her nightie. She got home at 9 o’clock in the morning.
Sue MoroneyAre district health boards expanding the size of their emergency departments or the number of their in-patient beds given that these are possible bottlenecks during the annual winter flu season?
Yes, they are, because the Government has given district health boards the money they need in order to expand where expansion is necessary. I mentioned in the House earlier that in the cases of North Shore Hospital and Waitakere Hospital in-patient beds are opening next month. Further beds in those two hospitals will open the following year. To give the member another example, I note that the number of cubicles in Christchurch Hospital’s emergency department will be increased by 16 before next year’s winter flu peak, and I think that takes the number from 39 to 55. So, yes, hospitals can increase their capacity because this Government invests in health.
Who does the Minister think he is kidding with these stories about action being taken when in fact it was his Prime Minister who promised she would remedy these situations, so much so that she promised Grey Power: “When the winter crop of influenza, bad asthma, and other problems hit, our hospitals in many centres just couldn’t cope. Patients were left in armchairs, corridors, operating theatres, and conference rooms. When an old person needs a hospital bed, a Labour Government is going to make sure they get it, and they can stay for as long as they like.”; and she has been there 8 years and absolutely nothing has happened, despite the $5 billion?
There is a bit of a routine in this House where the member who has just resumed his seat makes a statement to the effect that we have spent an extra 4 or 5 billion dollars and nothing has happened. Let me now tell him again some of the things that have happened. We have 4,000 extra nurses who did not exist before in our hospitals. We have 1,300, or thereabouts, extra doctors in our hospitals whom we did not have at the time of the change of Government. We have been building new hospitals, from Kaitāia to Invercargill inclusive. Some of them are little hospitals, and some of them are big hospitals. One of the biggest is just down the road here in Wellington. Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into new hospitals. We have new beds, new services, new approaches to the range of care we are offering—
Madam SPEAKERIt is impossible to hear. I will have to ask members to leave the Chamber if this continues. Would the Minister please complete his answer in silence.
I will need to do so succinctly, which is a shame, because the range of improved health services under this Government goes on for page after page.
Is the reason why the Minister had to rely on the Prime Minister to advise him of the difficult state of North Shore Hospital summed up in this comment by a New Zealand Herald reader, who said: “To the people languishing on Pete Hodgson’s waiting lists, my sincere sympathy. The health minister is more focused on the bed the National Party leader sleeps in than finding one for you. Hang your head in shame, Mr Hodgson.”?
There is one simple difference between the Leader of the Opposition and myself, and it is that whenever a question is put to me I answer it, and whenever a question is put to Mr Key he does not. He has a series of questions that remain unanswered, and I will continue to ask them.
Dr Jackie BlueHas it occurred to the Minister that as the public health system crashes down around him, mums and dads just want essential services, like emergency departments, fixed; or is it that Labour’s great strategist is happiest when wallowing and swimming around in sewers, more concerned about where MPs live than the state of our health services?
The Opposition has decided to go for a bit of a ritual gumming. The front page of the Dominion Post that the member held up, to indicate that the health system is again in crisis, is a projection out to 2026 stating that we will need a lot more surgeons. We already know that, which is why we are training more surgeons, which is why the number of surgeons in New Zealand continues to rise. Actually, the projections of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons are, if anything, a little under what is likely to be needed. It is really good of it to do that workforce planning. I am grateful to it; it is not the first time it has done it, but I do not think there is a crisis. You see, if one has investment in the health system on one’s mind, one does manage to increase the services available to New Zealanders reliably.
I seek leave to table information that shows that for every one of the 1,200 extra doctors employed under the Labour Government, there is a matching new bureaucrat.