{"id":526443,"date":"2026-07-15T00:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T00:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/526443\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T00:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T00:31:09","slug":"call-for-change-in-focus-on-healthcare-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/526443\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for change in focus on healthcare decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">RNZ Morning Report<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A prominent doctor says decisions about public healthcare should be made in the communities they serve.<\/p>\n<p>A group of doctors, academics and policy experts has written an opinion piece in NZ Doctor magazine this week calling for an overhaul of how public healthcare is provided.<\/p>\n<p>Surgeon Dr Phil Bagshaw, who opened a charity hospital in Christchurch in 2007, is one of the group.<\/p>\n<p>He told RNZ&#8217;s Morning Report\u00a0programme today New Zealand&#8217;s health system was heading towards privatisation and centralisation, and needed a change of direction.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If we really hand it to the locals, and we get the people who know about health controlling it&#8230; I have complete confidence in these people. I think they can make it work.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This kind of network was tried in New Zealand once before, Bagshaw said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When we had the Pae Ora Health Futures Act in 2022&#8230; in the West Coast of the South Island, they tried to get all of the community representatives together&#8230; that was working fairly well and then, of course, the current government came along and shut it down. &#8220;<\/p>\n<p>Health Minister Simeon Brown said earlier this year that health decision-making would be shifted closer to patients, communities and hospitals, starting from July 1.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Regions and districts will have clearer authority over workforce, resources and service delivery, while national leadership focuses on strategy, standards and system planning.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bagshaw said he did not support the direction the minister was moving in.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s talking about a system that will increasingly use the private sector to provide healthcare, and in doing so it will actually take resources away from the public health system.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He believed that direction meant New Zealand was moving closer to a health system like the United States, &#8220;where you have an almost totally privatised healthcare system which is the most inefficient and the most expensive in the world&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RNZ Morning Report A prominent doctor says decisions about public healthcare should be made in the communities they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-526443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526443","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=526443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}