Independent investigation needed into Waikato DHB

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For immediate use

24 November 2016

Independent investigation needed into Waikato DHB orthopaedics revelations

The union for senior doctors working in New Zealand’s public hospitals is calling for an independent investigation into the orthopaedics situation at Waikato District Health Board following revelations that managers are over-riding clinical decisions.

Ian Powell, the Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS), says the situation at Waikato is very serious and the concerns of orthopaedic surgeons there need to be investigated. In order to avoid a predictable white-wash, the investigation would need to be agreed with the orthopaedic surgeons.

He was commenting on reports that a group of orthopaedic surgeons has accused Waikato DHB managers of stopping them from making follow-up checks on patients so they could assess new patients instead to meet national health targets (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11753565 and http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201825132/waikato-hospital-surgeons-say-patients-at-risk-from-targets).

A letter signed by 13 orthopaedic surgeons at Waikato Hospital said the department no longer had faith in management, that Waikato Hospital was no longer a safe place to practise elective surgery, and that to block doctors from patients was “immoral, unethical and dangerous”. They referred specifically to the management decision to cancel patient follow-up clinics because they are not counted for the official target.

Mr Powell says that this is a shocking situation that needs to be urgently addressed in the interests of patient safety.

“This focus on meeting a national target at the expense of clinical judgement is obviously an untended consequence of having health targets which carry financial penalties if they are not achieved,” he says.

“Unfortunately, the situation at Waikato DHB can also be sheeted home to the increasingly dictatorial management culture there where hospital bosses feel free to override clinical advice and work on the basis of ‘do as I say’. A culture like that doesn’t make for good health care.”

He pointed to an address by ASMS National President Dr Hein Stander to the ASMS annual conference in Wellington last week and his comments that the Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal was happening in New Zealand in slow motion.

In his speech, Dr Stander noted that the failings of patient care in the Mid-Staffordshire situation had been attributed to three things that were fundamentally wrong: a focus on finance at the expense of patient care, an attitude that patient care was someone else’s problem, and defensiveness and complacency. His full speech is available at http://www.asms.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Presidential-Address-2016_166947.1.pdf .

ENDS

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