{"id":599243,"date":"2026-09-13T16:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T16:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/599243\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T16:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T16:18:11","slug":"womens-health-advocates-questions-waitlist-discrepancies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/599243\/","title":{"rendered":"Women&#8217;s health advocates questions waitlist discrepancies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Women&#8217;s Health Action is questioning why colposcopy &#8211; or cervix scans &#8211; has seen significantly less improvement in wait times than other diagnostic services.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Colposcopy is a procedure to check the cervix for signs of precancerous or cancerous tissue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Yesterday, Minister of Health Simeon Brown announced that waitlists for diagnostic services had reduced 21 percent overall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Waitlists from June 2025 to June 2025 have fallen 9 percent for colposcopy and echocardiography. While CT waitlists were down 48 percent and MRI down 33 percent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Manager of the action group, Isis McKay said, &#8220;Why has the reduction in the colposcopy waitlist been considerably smaller than the reductions seen in services such as CT and MRI scanning or coronary angiography?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">She questioned to what extent the use of private health providers contributed to the improvement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Urgent colonoscopy services was the only service where waitlists had gotten worse, increasing two percent since June 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;Understanding why some services are improving more quickly than others is crucial if we are to ensure equitable and timely access to care across the system.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">McKay asked the Government for transparency around the changes, saying this will help improve trust that it can be maintained long term.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;These details matter because there is no quick fix to the challenges facing our health system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;The real measure of success will not simply be a temporary reduction in waitlist numbers, but whether people can consistently access the care they need, when they need it, regardless of where they live.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Women&#8217;s Health Action is questioning why colposcopy &#8211; or cervix scans &#8211; has seen significantly less improvement in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-599243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599243","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=599243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}