Long wait for surgery amid Covid, flu delays

When Fran Wilkinson phoned the hospital recently to check she was still getting a hip replacement, they said they were still working through patients put on the waiting list in September.

The Marlborough resident believes she is now facing another 10 months of terrible pain, using crutches and relying on her husband for everyday tasks.

‘‘I have gone from an active 71-yearold to a disabled 73-year-old,’’ she said.

Wilkinson is one of many patients languishing in pain on elective surgery waiting lists that have ballooned out to many months. Many surgeries have been cancelled or deferred at the last minute as a result of staff illness or hospital bed shortages, as the country grapples with Covid-19 and the first influenza season since 2019.

Wilkinson said she had entered her retirement fit and healthy, with a love of gardening, playing bridge and going for walks. However, she developed arthritis in her hips in the last few years. She had her right hip replaced in November 2021, after about a 10-month wait.

‘‘It was a very successful surgery – straight away, the pain goes,’’ she said.

But by then her left hip had deteriorated, too. She was put back on the waiting list – and several months went by without hearing a thing, Wilkinson said.

‘‘So I rang the surgeon, to see if I was still on the wait list.

‘‘His secretary rang me back, and I asked, ‘Do you know when I’ll get the surgery?’ and she didn’t know, but she said ‘we’re just doing the people now that came to see us in September’.

‘‘To start with you accept the waiting, for a little bit, but when it gets to months and months . . . It’s frustrating, because of the pain.’’

Wilkinson said she was prescribed codeine, but that was starting to damage her kidneys and made her constipated, so she switched to paracetamol, which was not as effective.

She had become nearly housebound. She could still drive to the occasional game of bridge, but getting out of the car was a challenge when she relied on crutches, she said.

‘‘My poor husband, God help him, thank goodness I’ve got him. He does the housework and cooks dinner.’’

However, a friend of hers waiting for months for her own hip replacement, aged 80 and living alone, was really starting to struggle to take care of herself, she said.

‘‘People say, ‘Can you not go private?’ and you don’t want to say, ‘Well I can’t afford it,’ but I do say that.

‘‘But it also goes against my grain – I was raised to think that in New Zealand, we should all have access to healthcare when we need it.

‘‘They used to be so organised here [at Wairau Hospital]. But things have just gone from bad to worse. It’s not the surgeon’s fault, I know it’s hard to get nurses . . . I think there’s a lot of things that have gone wrong.’’

Staffing issues were raised at the last Nelson Marlborough health board meeting at Nelson in June. Board chairperson Jenny Black said closed borders meant fewer people applying for health jobs, while existing staff had caught Covid-19 or had to stay home to care for wha¯ nau.

‘‘The stress on those who are available to work is something we have not seen in health before. Our ability to provide a service is dictated by our workforce,’’ Black said in her report to the board.

It would be an issue for the board’s replacement, Health NZ, to figure out, she said. ‘‘But there does need to be change.’’

In the 12 months ending in May, Nelson Marlborough Health planned 5623 surgical discharges but delivered only 82% of those. Only 64% of elective case weights were delivered as planned.

New Zealand Orthopaedic Association president and Christchurch surgeon John Mckie said last week there were about 6600 people nationally waiting for elective hip, knee and spine surgery – the worst he had seen in his nearly 30-year career.