{"id":37079,"date":"2025-09-22T18:00:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/37079\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T18:00:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:00:16","slug":"nz-spends-more-on-health-than-most-countries-so-why-is-our-health-system-still-sick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/37079\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ spends more on health than most countries &#8211; so why is our health system still sick?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">\n         The pain came on quickly. It had been a normal Sunday \u2013 gardening, Pilates, cooking \u2013 but that night, talent agent Sandra Bestall began to experience a stabbing sensation in her lower abdomen. It kept her awake, and in the early hours of the morning her partner said, \u201cLet\u2019s get<br \/>\n         you to a hospital.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">She arrived at the emergency department at Thames Hospital at about 6am, where she received timely and excellent care. \u201cStraight into a bed. About 30 minutes later, a nurse came in, asked me questions, went away, came back and gave me a fentanyl shot because he could see I was in pain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThe doctor \u2013 I think he comes down from Auckland \u2013 saw me at nine o\u2019clock, came back to check on me, gave me another shot, kept me lying down the whole time. He was really nice. He said, \u2018Look, I suspect you\u2019ve got appendicitis. We\u2019ll get you a CT scan.\u2019 Thirty minutes later, I was being wheeled in for the scan. Afterwards he came back, did a little jig and said, \u2018Unfortunately, you do have appendicitis \u2013 but it hasn\u2019t burst. We\u2019re going to get you straight off to Waikato this afternoon.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Bestall asked if her partner could drive her. The doctor replied \u201cNo, stay lying down. You\u2019re going in the ambulance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Waikato Hospital has one of the busiest emergency departments in New Zealand \u2013 84,000 presentations in 2024 \u2013 roughly 230 per day. Overcrowding is constant, especially during winter. In 2017, New Zealand Doctor described the problem of \u201cambulance ramping\u201d at Waikato\u2019s ED \u2013 \u201cwhen injured or unwell patients arriving in ambulances cannot be unloaded because there is nowhere for them in the department\u201d. It quoted a house surgeon: \u201cThe situation was dire. We have patients waiting in corridors; nurses are leaving all the time \u2013 we are not coping.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">In June 2022, the ED manager apologised to a stroke victim who left after being told they faced a nine-hour wait to see a doctor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">About 5000 people visit an emergency care clinic every day in New Zealand, and many experience a public health system that is clearly under immense strain. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">In February, The New Zealand Herald revealed all of the country\u2019s EDs were failing to assess patients with life-threatening conditions within recommended timeframes. More than 300,000 patients with \u201cimminently\u201d or \u201cpotentially\u201d life-threatening conditions were not seen within recommended times in the first six months of 2024, the Herald reported, despite triage standards indicating they should have been seen promptly. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">In market research company Ipsos\u2019s June survey, 43% of 1002 respondents identified healthcare as the most important issue facing New Zealand. <\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"Theatre nurses and doctors outside Auckland City Hospital during nationwide \u201cFightback for Health\u201d protests on May Day. Photo \/ NZME\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>Theatre nurses and doctors outside Auckland City Hospital during nationwide \u201cFightback for Health\u201d protests on May Day. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Early this month, Chief Ombudsman John Allen criticised Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand for withholding data showing more than a third of evening shifts and half of all day shifts in our public hospitals last year were understaffed. <\/p>\n<p>Crisis, what crisis?<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Nearly everyone in the health sector agrees it is in crisis: underfunded and understaffed. Nurses describe themselves taking histories and conducting ECGs in corridors, patients in acute pain standing for hours because reception areas have no spare seats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">And a new Infometrics report for the Nurses Organisation found the public health system was understaffed by an average 587 nurses per shift last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">But there is a mystery here. If we compare New Zealand with other OECD nations, our health spend as a percentage of GDP is higher than average, and public health spending as a proportion of government spending is one of the highest. We have slightly fewer doctors per head of population than peer nations \u2013 but more nurses. And the number of doctors and nurses per capita has risen steadily for 25 years. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">It\u2019s true we have a growing and ageing population and this places greater strain on the system. But even adjusting for this, there are more clinical staff than ever before, and funding is higher than it was before Covid. How do we reconcile this with reports of chronic understaffing?<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">The answer is, unsurprisingly, disputed. National blames the previous Labour government, particularly its decision to merge the 20 district health boards into a single nationwide system, claiming this created a bloated and undisciplined bureaucratic monster. Labour blames the coalition, its budget cuts and reduction of staff at Health New Zealand. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Neither explanation seems persuasive \u2013 the delays and overcrowding were present at the end of the last National government in 2017, endured through Labour and are worse today. <\/p>\n<p>Cost disease<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">New Zealand Institute of Economic Research deputy chief executive Sarah Hogan has a background in health and public policy. She says other public health systems around the world are experiencing the same challenge: rapid increases in the cost of staff, buildings and health infrastructure that call the ability to fund those systems into question. <\/p>\n<p>Our health spend is higher than the OECD average and\u00a0we\u00a0have more clinical staff than ever before.<\/p>\n<p>Danyl McLauchlan<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">In the late 1960s, US economists William Baumol and William Bowen predicted this crisis, noting the productivity of workers in the healthcare sector was stagnant. It\u2019s a very labour-intensive industry \u2013 the amount of time spent on surgery, nursing, diagnosis and patient interaction stays roughly the same over time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Baumol coined the term \u201ccost disease\u201d to explain why costs rise faster than productivity gains in people-dependent professions. A car company can double the number of cars it makes per day by building better robots, but it\u2019s hard for a hospital to double the number of patients treated per hour without compromising patient safety \u2013 unless it doubles the number of staff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">A Treasury report last year estimated productivity in the health sector has declined since 2015. It cited a combination of causes: multi-morbidity (more patients presenting with multiple health conditions, making them harder to treat); an increase in the number of patients over 65; and changes in employment arrangements \u2013 including safer staffing for nurses and junior doctors and increased non-clinical time for specialists and consultants. These were designed to improve safety and staff wellbeing, but they increased costs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">If we combine cost disease with an ageing population, global demand for healthcare workers and the increasing expense of novel healthcare technologies \u2013 as seen in last year\u2019s funding boost to Pharmac for new cancer treatments and other conditions \u2013 we should expect to see less capacity at higher cost. And we do.<\/p>\n<p>Waiting in pain<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Sandra Bestall arrived at Waikato\u2019s ED by ambulance at about 6.30pm on Monday. She was put into a wheelchair. \u201cA nurse apologised and said there was nowhere for me to lie down, so they took me to the general reception area. I thought, \u2018What\u2019s going on?\u2019 They took my notes \u2013 I\u2019d been handed over by a nurse from Thames, so you\u2019d think they\u2019d know I wasn\u2019t just a walk-in with a cut lip.<\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"Sandra Bestall: While she waited two days for surgery for appendicitis, her appendix burst, threatening her life. Photo \/ Supplied\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>Sandra Bestall: While she waited two days for surgery for appendicitis, her appendix burst, threatening her life. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cBut the reception staff laughed and said, \u2018There\u2019s no beds, ha ha,\u2019 even though I\u2019d been told there was one for me.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">She befriended another patient \u2013 a local \u2013 who told her which gangs controlled which regions of Waikato before asking, \u201cAnd what gang runs Thames?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Bestall waited about 31\/2 hours without anyone checking on her. \u201cAt about 10pm, I went to the counter, said I was brought by ambulance, and told there was a bed. They said, \u2018Well, there\u2019s no bed.\u2019 I told them I was in a lot of pain and had never had fentanyl before, that I was feeling emotional and unsafe because there was some scary stuff going on in the waiting area. They told me to sit back down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">She rang Thames Hospital and said, \u2018Can I come back there? I\u2019m here alone and nothing\u2019s happening.\u2019 They said, \u2018No, go up to the counter and tell them how you\u2019re feeling.\u2019 I did, but nothing happened until a young intern and a doctor came to see me. They asked all the same questions I\u2019d already answered in Thames. They offered pain pills. I said yes, but they forgot to bring them. It was now 1.30am and I still hadn\u2019t had any painkillers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">After the intern and doctor left, a nurse appeared and managed to find Bestall some medication and a room where she could sleep. \u201cThe next day, I was moved to the area I was originally meant to be in once a bed became available. If it wasn\u2019t for that nurse, I think I\u2019d have been stuck all night with no pain relief.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nil by mouth<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Health is National\u2019s most vulnerable issue. According to Ipsos, Labour is seven percentage points ahead of National on managing the cost of living but 15% ahead on healthcare and hospitals \u2013 a gulf of potential election-losing scale. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">In his cabinet reshuffle at the beginning of the year, Christopher Luxon took the health portfolio off Shane Reti \u2013 a GP and former Harkness fellow at Harvard Medical School \u2013 and awarded it to Simeon Brown, who worked as a banker and holds a double degree in law and commerce. Brown had been in the role for six months when the Listener spoke to him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">More than most politicians, Brown communicates in press release-ese, soothingly repeating key messages: \u201crecord levels of investment\u201d; \u201ctimely access to healthcare\u201d; \u201chard-working doctors and nurses\u201d; \u201cpatients at the heart of the system\u201d. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">One National Party insider notes, \u201cThere might not be a policy difference between Reti and Brown but if Wairoa gets a new podiatrist Simeon will take credit for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Brown also thinks in terms of productivity, though he naturally attributes the health sector\u2019s decline to the previous government rather than any deeper trend. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a big job to turn that around,\u201d he says. \u201cIt will take time, but we now have dedicated staff making progress under this government \u2013 ED wait times are starting to reduce, investment in cancer medicines is helping thousands of New Zealanders and immunisation rates are improving again for children.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"Hospital senior doctors on strike in May during\u00a0a pay dispute that remains unsettled. They plan further action this month. Photo \/ NZME\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>Hospital senior doctors on strike in May during\u00a0a pay dispute that remains unsettled. They plan further action this month. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">He says digital technologies are an important tool for improving outputs, predicting AI will be a major productivity enhancer in healthcare. \u201cHealth New Zealand has just approved trials of ambient scribes in EDs \u2013 AI tools that write clinical notes and reduce admin load. This lets clinicians see more patients each day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Nearly everyone in health is cautiously optimistic about AI \u2013 although some are less cautious than others. In 2015, computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton \u2013 \u201cthe godfather of AI\u201d \u2013 urged universities to stop training radiologists, predicting they\u2019d be obsolete by 2020. He recently revised the prediction: he now expects interpretations of medical imaging to be handled by a combination of physicians and AI, which will \u201cmake radiologists a whole lot more efficient in addition to improving accuracy\u201d \u2013 ie, they will increase productivity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Brown is also looking to reform Health NZ\u2019s IT infrastructure. The DHB merger revealed either 4000 or 6000 (even the number is disputed) disparate systems across the public health system, most of them out-of-date, lacking in proper backup mechanisms and prone to crashing, leading to operational disruptions. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">In 2021, a ransomware attack on Waikato Hospital crippled IT and phone systems, exposed sensitive patient data and forced clinicians to revert to manual processes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">A 2024 survey by business research consultancy Gartner found roughly 74% of Health NZ\u2019s IT spending merely keeps these legacy systems going. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">One of National\u2019s favourite attacks on the DHB merger is the infamous Excel spreadsheet that Health NZ used in lieu of a financial system. \u201cThey were cutting and pasting the data from 20 different DHBs,\u201d Brown recalls with undisguised glee. The coalition government is still working on a formal digital investment plan for the organisation.<\/p>\n<p>Cartels &amp; bottlenecks<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Sir Angus Deaton \u2013 the world\u2019s most celebrated health economist, awarded a Nobel Prize in 2015 for his work on poverty and welfare \u2013 once denounced the medical profession, stating, \u201cPhysicians are a giant rent-seeking conspiracy that\u2019s taking money away from the rest of us, and yet everybody loves physicians. You can\u2019t touch them.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cRent-seeking\u201d is the strongest term of abuse economists have. It means you\u2019re taking money without creating value. This may sound confusing \u2013 doctors obviously have enormous value. What Deaton means is there\u2019s considerable demand for medical care because we put a high value on life and minimising suffering. Most clinical diagnosis and prescribing can be performed only by registered doctors who require at least seven years of training, and this tightly constrains the supply of medical care. <\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"Bed blocking: The nationwide shortage of hospital beds result in patients being treated in the hallway, or being sent home early. Photo \/ Getty Images\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>Bed blocking: The nationwide shortage of hospital beds result in patients being treated in the hallway, or being sent home early. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Since 2000, between 550 and 650 new doctors a year have graduated; we need nearly twice as many to meet demand. The constraint makes doctors comparatively wealthy. The bottleneck is always justified on the basis of patient safety, although keeping patients with acute conditions waiting for many hours in the ED, or weeks to visit their GP, does not seem very safe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">New Zealand is also short of hospital beds. The OECD average is 4.3 per 1000. We have 2.7. In September last year, Waikato Hospital\u2019s cardiology department had 109 patients but only 54 beds. Overflow patients were placed in other wards, filling them up. This blocked the emergency department, with incoming patients stranded in the waiting room or sitting in ambulances. A cardiologist told RNZ National his department performed eight operations a week. \u201cAt the moment we have 20 inpatients waiting for cardiac surgery, so it\u2019s not difficult maths to say that if you come in today with a heart attack and need cardiac surgery you will wait four or five weeks.\u201d One patient waited 54 days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Bed blocking is occurring across the entire system. In May, a clinician\u2019s report at Auckland\u2019s Middlemore Hospital found 1500 patients had been treated in corridors \u2013 including road crash and stroke victims \u2013 over a single month. It noted: \u201cThe ED has 151 beds but there were at least 12 days last winter where more than 400 patients arrived in a single day.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">A lack of community facilities contributes to the problem. Many bed-block patients are elderly and need rest-home, dementia or hospital-level care that isn\u2019t available. Emergency physicians have warned the access shortage is the single biggest risk to patient safety.<\/p>\n<p>Supply-side focus<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Many of the government\u2019s reforms are aimed at solving supply problems. A new medical school at Waikato will add 120 training places a year after its planned 2028 opening. It is funding an extra 25 places a year at the Auckland and Otago medical schools from next year and has announced a two-year training programme to support 100 overseas-trained doctors into primary care. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">But Brown is also interested in expanding the nature of the workforce. \u201cWe want a wider range of professionals: specialists, doctors, nurse practitioners [who work in GP practices and can prescribe medicines] and physician associates [a new category of overseas-trained health professionals working under doctor supervision]. We\u2019re funding 120 new nurse practitioners per year. The goal is a multidisciplinary workforce where patients can be assessed, diagnosed, treated and prescribed for by a wider set of professionals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Finally, Brown is outsourcing more elective surgeries to private providers, transitioning from ad hoc contracts to three-and even 10-year agreements and moving more patients (about 10,000 this year) into private hospitals. This is arguably his most controversial policy change.<\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"Protesters representing Whangarei. Photo \/ NZME\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>Protesters representing Whangarei. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, which represents senior doctors, warns outsourcing could lead to private providers treating the less complex, lower-risk patients, leaving the costly and complex patients to the public system. Many specialists work across both sectors, and as private work expands, it may take staff away from the public system, reducing capacity to treat acute conditions and teach new doctors, affecting the future specialist pipeline.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">In May, the association released data showing the specialist workforce in public hospitals grew 4% from June 2022-June 2024 (less than population growth) while those working in the private sector increased 9.5%. Public hospital capacity fell in psychiatry, cardiothoracic surgery, paediatric surgery and anaesthesia.<\/p>\n<p>Outsourcing fears<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">When Labour\u2019s health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall was practising as an infectious diseases specialist in Singapore, a poor Malay patient in ICU with septicaemia pulled his IV lines out because his insurance wouldn\u2019t cover his bills. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThat\u2019s life threatening to do that,\u201d says Verrall. Experiences like this are one reason Verrall is highly resistant to increased use of private providers in the public health system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI certainly disagree with the idea there should be 10-year outsourcing contracts. That will lead to the Americanisation of our health system \u2026 public services will collapse because we will lack the staff.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">She\u2019s also critical of the lack of transparency surrounding the pricing of these operations and the lengthy delay in reporting on the quality of their outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>Health NZ has just approved\u00a0trials of AI tools that\u00a0write clinical notes and\u00a0reduce admin load.<\/p>\n<p>Simeon Brown<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Verrall is one of the most cosmopolitan and highly educated politicians New Zealand has seen. She trained in medicine at Otago \u2013 where she entered student politics \u2013 then studied tropical medicine and bioethics in the UK, Singapore and Peru before postgraduate work in Alabama, completing a PhD in tuberculosis epidemiology at Otago. Critical of Labour\u2019s early Covid response, she was commissioned to investigate the contact-tracing system, which led to her becoming a list MP in 2020 and minister of health in February 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Like Brown, Verrall is interested in technological solutions to the health sector\u2019s problems. She says Labour had planned a unified national health IT system but National not only cancelled the funding for it \u201cbut cut the staff who do the IT maintenance and repair\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">To her, many problems in the public health sector, especially in hospitals, sit on the demand side: it\u2019s too expensive and difficult to see a GP, so people defer treatment until their conditions are worse, requiring more advanced treatment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThat is backwards. It should be easier to get the care you need in the community \u2026 Otherwise, it does just drive people to the emergency department. Or many people miss out.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">She\u2019s an advocate for public health (population-wide) programmes to reduce the drivers of chronic disease. \u201cThere is a cheaper way to do all this, and that is by taking prevention and primary care seriously.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">She has pursued the roll-back of anti-smoking measures driven by Associate Health Minister Casey Costello like an oncologist exposing tumours.<\/p>\n<p>Economist\u2019s prescription<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Between the two main parties there are glimmers of the solutions NZIER\u2019s Sarah Hogan argues for. She believes \u201ccost disease\u201d is a solvable problem: that we can afford to maintain a comprehensive system so long as we maintain economic growth. If we\u2019re getting richer as a country we can simply choose to spend some of our additional wealth on healthcare. <\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"Many patients are elderly and would benefit from the provision of extra resources to go towards rest-homes and care centres for longer term stays. Photo \/ Getty Images\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>Many patients are elderly and would benefit from the provision of extra resources to go towards rest-homes and care centres for longer term stays. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">To Hogan, unaffordability is a \u201cfiscal illusion\u201d, but only if we shift away from the constraints of the current system. She identifies five priorities for funding public health:<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">1. Shift away from the dominance of GPs delivering primary care (to relieve some of the supply bottleneck) and scale up community-based services, including non-government agencies with diverse skills and workers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">2. Strengthen non-hospital services such as aged care to reduce hospital stays that are blocking capacity. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">3. Build digital infrastructure \u2013 not just integrated patient-tracking, finance and payment systems promised 30 years ago but never delivered, but a 21st-century stack allowing remote patient monitoring and broader workforce participation. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">4. Adopt the ACC approach to incentivising prevention and early diagnosis, rather than waiting for chronic patients to require hospital treatment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">5. Expand access to medicines by expanding prescribing rights beyond doctors. OECD nations spend an average 1.4% of their national income on pharmaceuticals. A 2023 report by Sydney-based Shawview Consulting estimated New Zealand spends 0.4-0.5%.<\/p>\n<p>Next, please<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">After her first night at Waikato Hospital, Sandra Bestall was told she would probably not be operated on until the following day. She went into surgery on Wednesday morning, but by then her appendix had burst \u2013 a potentially life-threatening development greatly complicating her recovery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI was just in a lot of pain and just [had this] constant feeding of a sushi train of drugs pumped in. I had a night where I was vomiting on the toilet floor where the young nurse had to come and put a towel under my head to help me with the throwing up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">She spent the rest of the week including the weekend in hospital battling the infection and was discharged a week after she\u2019d arrived. \u201cWhen I said, \u2018Oh yeah, I\u2019m feeling better\u2019, someone came in an hour later and said, \u2018Hey, listen, we need the room.\u2019 They wheeled me down to another waiting area for another three hours. They gave me one pack of paracetamol and five days of antibiotics and said, \u2018See you later.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Bestall returned home to Thames. No follow-up or convalescent care was offered or organised between Waikato and the local hospital, despite her having had abdominal surgery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Anton Chekhov, the Russian playwright who was also a medical doctor, said, \u201cWhen a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it cannot be cured.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">The symptoms afflicting New Zealand\u2019s public health system seem grim, but if the primary affliction is economic rather than medical, it can be cured with the seemingly simple remedies of reducing demand and increasing supply.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NzpREUNDumYW\" style=\"display:none\">Economics, however, is constrained by politics \u2013 which usually prevents significant change to the status quo. But with health, political inertia is coming into conflict with patient lives, and a growing public clamour for serious change. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#\" class=\"flex cursor-pointer items-center gap-1.5 text-black\" data-test-ui=\"social-link--bookmark-below\" aria-label=\"bookmark\" id=\"social-link--bookmark-below\">Save<\/a>Share this article<\/p>\n<p class=\"mx-4 mt-2.5 text-xs font-normal leading-5 text-sys-text-premium\">Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.<\/p>\n<p>Copy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter\/XLinkedInReddit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pain came on quickly. It had been a normal Sunday \u2013 gardening, Pilates, cooking \u2013 but that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34262,6116,34263,1558,11164,34261,10748,6217,6694,2245,17515,29190,42,134,2241,11551,185,20558,17510,2513,130,1304,3025,43,2551,12909,69,90,22213,2850,5502,34259,29058,3048,34260,12819,27916,17509,22139,15163,6100,10809,6211,5824,131,1361,40,38,41,39,4276],"class_list":["post-37079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-abdomen","tag-agent","tag-awake","tag-been","tag-began","tag-bestall","tag-came","tag-cooking","tag-countries","tag-early","tag-experience","tag-gardening","tag-headlines","tag-health","tag-hospital","tag-hours","tag-is","tag-kept","tag-lets","tag-lower","tag-more","tag-morning","tag-most","tag-news","tag-night","tag-normal","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-our","tag-pain","tag-partner","tag-pilates","tag-quickly","tag-said","tag-sandra","tag-sensation","tag-sick","tag-so","tag-spends","tag-stabbing","tag-still","tag-sunday","tag-system","tag-talent","tag-than","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-why"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}