Mulholland spoke at that meeting, organised by the senior doctors\u2019 union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, and said the letter he received promised an update on the situation in 2025.<\/p>\n
That never came, prompting Health NZ executive national director for clinical Dr Richard Sullivan to apologise for the lack of communication. He said officials must do better.<\/p>\n
Sullivan said the region was doing okay now for diagnostic procedures such as colonoscopies, as specialists from neighbouring regions were called on to help.<\/p>\n
During a colonoscopy, a patient\u2019s large intestine is examined by a camera on the end of a tube.<\/p>\n
Mulholland told RNZ it was good to hear Health NZ acknowledge it had dropped the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other part of the apology that I was wanting to hear is what\u2019s the plan moving forward? It\u2019s been 18 months since we\u2019ve heard anything from Health New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere would be still patients out there waiting of those 800 people who were notified they would no longer receive a surveillance colonoscopy, who would be wondering, \u2018Am I in trouble here?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cIt requires correspondence to all of those patients who are affected to know where we stand and what the plan is moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mulholland said he had the means to get the procedure done privately, costing between $5000-$10,000, but others wouldn\u2019t be as lucky.<\/p>\n
Health NZ central region executive regional director Chris Lowry said: \u201cWe took note of the feedback about our failure to communicate with patients and GPs, and we intend to provide an update to both groups shortly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said it was good to hear the apology, but it shouldn\u2019t have taken a public meeting to get that.<\/p>\n
Figures obtained by RNZ showed that, in early May, 239 people were waiting for a surveillance colonoscopy through Palmerston North Hospital. Of those, 161 were waiting outside the recommended timeframe of 84 days.<\/p>\n
There were 247 people with symptoms waiting for the procedure and, again, 161, were waiting for longer than recommended \u2013 42 days in that case.<\/p>\n
At last week\u2019s meeting, Sullivan also confirmed the lowering of the bowel screening age from 60-58 was delayed at Palmerston North Hospital, being introduced on July 1, rather than as expected in March.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis provided time to ensure the MidCentral district can accommodate the additional follow-up appointments, after participants return a positive screening test,\u201d Lowry told RNZ.<\/p>\n
She said the timing for the drop to 56, as announced in the Budget, was yet to be confirmed for each region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mulholland spoke at that meeting, organised by the senior doctors\u2019 union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43507,36334,3013,2534,33912,134,1736,111,43,139,1536,69,1523,43667,14997,6923],"class_list":["post-510426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-apologises","tag-bowel","tag-but","tag-cancer","tag-ellingham","tag-health","tag-jimmy","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-paused","tag-procedures","tag-what"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510426","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=510426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}