Health Minister, Treasury at odds over bowel screening

A proposal to roll out a national bowel screening programme was eviscerated by Treasury in the lead up to the budget, documents show.

But Health Minister Jonathan Coleman returned heavy fire, saying Treasury attempted to ‘‘ankle tap’’ a programme that would save 700 lives a year, because it did not want to spend the money.

The Government’s bean counters not only called the Health Ministry’s financials into question, but advised Ministers that DHBs had barely been consulted.

There was also little confidence the workforce could cope and associated pressures, like increased surgeries that would come out of such a programme, had not been factored in.

Treasury has released hundreds of documents relating to the decisions made by the Finance Minister and his Cabinet colleagues in the May 2016 Budget.

As part of the budget $39.3m was dedicated to the rollout of a national bowel cancer screening programme.

The Government has long acknowledged a national screening programme was inevitable, but significant concerns over whether staffing levels could cope with the added workload a programme would bring have delayed it a number of years.

Documents showed Treasury officials briefed Finance Minister Bill English, Associate Finance Minister Steven Joyce and Associate Finance Minister Paula Bennett, on the state of a business case from Health Ministry officials pushing for a programme.

This was in February, just three months before the programme was revealed.

Coleman was not copied into the briefing, which advised the trio they should send the Health Ministry back to the drawing board.

‘‘The likelihood of successful delivery within the cost and time parameters indicated in the programme business case is low and would come with significant fiscal and operational risks.

‘‘The Ministry should be instructed to revisit the programme business case, in consultation with DHBs, to develop a robustly costed proposal (capital and direct/indirect operating costs) with achievable timeframes for implementation.’’

The briefing said assumptions around the availability and skill level of the workforce to carry out the screening were ‘‘not considered to be credible’’, by the Chair of Health Workforce New Zealand.

Assumptions about cost and timings, that the Health Ministry made in its proposal, did ‘‘not stand up to scrutiny’’.

Indicative capital funding requirements for the first DHBs were ‘‘significantly exaggerated’’ and ‘‘determined without consultation with the affected DHBs’’.

Coleman said it was typical of Treasury, which had tried to block further health expenditure at every turn.