Another lean year ahead for cash-strapped public hospitals

10 June 2016

Another lean year ahead for cash-strapped public hospitals, figures show

“The Government can fudge the figures all it wants but the reality is that it will be ordinary New Zealanders who miss out on operations and other treatment if the public health system continues to be short-changed,” says Angela Belich, Deputy Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

A detailed post-Budget analysis of health funding released today by the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) and ASMS shows Vote Health is significantly short of what it needs to cover increasing costs, demographic changes and new policy initiatives for the seventh year in a row.

CTU Economist Bill Rosenberg and ASMS Director of Policy and Research Lyndon Keene have been poring over the figures since their release at the end of May to understand how much money is actually available to the public health sector.

“Once the political rhetoric has been stripped away, they estimated an operational funding shortfall this year of $248 million, with the country’s district health boards short of what they need by $152 million,” says Angela Belich.

“The Government had an opportunity in this Budget to start addressing years of under-investment in the public health system and the medical workforce. They haven’t done so and now they’re trying to pretend that all is fine with health funding. The reality for hospitals, though, is that they will continue to struggle to make ends meet while dealing with a high level of unmet health need.

The full CTU-ASMS analysis is available online at (http://union.org.nz/sites/union.org.nz/files/Did-the-Budget-provide-enough-for-Health-2016.pdf and the Health Vote 2016 post-Budget spreadsheet: http://union.org.nz/sites/union.org.nz/files/Health-vote-2016-post-Budget.xlsx).

The day after the Budget was announced, an editorial in the New Zealand Medical Journal took issue with claims that the cost of public health care in this country is excessive and unsustainable. The editorial, Funding New Zealand’s public health care system: time for an honest appraisal and public debate, examined data from New Zealand and overseas and concluded that claims about New Zealand’s health care spending were based on a misrepresentation.

It was written jointly by Lyndon Keene and Ian Powell from the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS), Christchurch surgeon Phil Bagshaw (who chairs the Canterbury Charity Hospital Trust), Emeritus Professor M. Gary Nicholls (Department of Medicine, University of Otago), Council of Trade Unions economist and Director of Policy Dr Bill Rosenberg, and Professor Christopher Frampton (Biostatistician, University of Otago - Christchurch).

“There’s a growing body of evidence and analysis that the Government needs to spend more on public health to meet the genuine level of need out in the community,” says Ms Belich. “There will be consequences for years to come if we don’t get this right.”

ENDS

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