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Todd Talks |
New Zealanders are facing critical delays as surgical waitlists grow. Nearly three years of a pandemic and our border closures have meant the loss of thousands of health workers, while unvaccinated medical staff are still not allowed back to work. We are short 4000 nurses.
Despite these medical challenges affecting many New Zealanders, the Government has chosen to reform our health system by rolling our district health boards into two new health systems – the Māori Health Authority, and Health New Zealand, a management-heavy model with massive expenditure for yet another public entity to be restructured and rebranded.
We no longer have health services managed locally; our city's public health services are administered from Wellington. Losing our local board means that decisions will not be made efficiently. Our community has been disempowered in decision-making without local governance for public health services. We don't know what happens at Wellington meetings; no media or public may attend and only brief summaries of meeting agendas are released.
Bay of Plenty health budgets have been capped for the past two years – and, based on our population, we are being short-changed by $80 million per year. Our hospital was built to service a population that is now 50,000 higher than forecast.
It's disappointing that the Government's lack of care for our wellbeing can be seen in appalling ED wait times throughout New Zealand. In June, 540 people waited more than 24 hours to be treated, a 182 per cent increase since April.
Government must offer immigration incentives to international health workers because at present, New Zealand is not an attractive destination for nurses and our people are suffering.
