SDHB not performing as poorly as neighbour
AS a former chief medical adviser at the Ministry of Health now residing happily in Central Otago, I maintain a particular interest in the performance of my local DHB.
I have followed the various stories about the reported difficulties of Southern DHB patients in accessing colonoscopy services. In order to gain a wider perspective, I have looked at the most recent data collected by the ministry on the performance of each DHB.
For the sake of simplicity, I will only compare Southern DHB with our closest tertiary provider —
Canterbury DHB (which incidentally is the DHB from which the authors of the report on the Southern DHB gastroenterology department come).
Intervention rates for colonoscopy — the number of procedures delivered per 10,000 people — are ‘‘standardised’’ to account for the population differences in, for example age, gender and ethnicity, so that meaningful comparisons can be made.
In the year ended December 31, 2018, both DHBs had rates below the national average. However, the rate for Southern DHB was higher than that of Canterbury.
Just as intervention rates measure performance, the number of patients on a waiting list who are waiting longer than the recommended time give an indication of the efficiency of a DHB in managing those patients to whom they have ‘‘promised’’ a procedure.
In that regard, Southern DHB is ranked second best out of the 20 DHBs (eight patients as at the end of June 2019). Canterbury DHB is ranked last out of the 20 with 814 patients.
Of some concern is the fact that of those 814, 550 are on the surveillance programme — those patients who, for a variety of reasons, are considered at greater risk of bowel cancer.
All of this is cold comfort for local people who have experienced difficulty accessing a colonoscopy. But it does indicate that the unsatisfactory situation is not confined to just OtagoSouthland. David Geddis
Chatto Creek
Alcohol policy
I THANK Jennie Connor for her acknowledgement of my good intentions (Letters, 6.9.19). I did not in my previous remarks (Letters, 4.9.19) so much refute bodies of research as ask a question: is Sweden as free from alcohol problems as research suggests its alcohol regulations should make it?
From her remark on Sweden that ‘‘[it] is a classic example of historical and cultural dimensions at play’’, she suggests, I think, that said dimensions perhaps undermine or somehow affect the efficacy of the regulations.
And, yes, New Zealand has its own history, which entails the collision of an alcoholconsuming culture with an indigenous one that didn’t. I’m not sure if this fact alone justifies a Waitangi claim, or whether this claim can acknowledge the broader and deeper historical and cultural elements of our society that have developed since 1840 (there have been a few).
In fact, I am inclined to wonder whether the Waitangi Tribunal is the appropriate vehicle for pushing a policy platform that, whatever its theoretical virtues, could be socially divisive and politically tenuous. Culture really is a very complicated thing.
Harry Love North East Valley
House building
WHY is it that politicians almost always fail to play elegantly with other people’s ideas and experience?
From the disasters of Brexit and KiwiBuild, to the imperatives of genetic modification to climate change, politics seems to deny opportunity for intelligent discourse between those who purport to represent us all but clearly not if your idea differs from an ‘‘in house’’ parliamentary desktop analysis.
If Minister Woods still doesn’t understand the need for an inquiry into the cost of building a home when a plastic screw for a toilet seat is priced at $27, she really does need to get out more and talk with real people who abound — outside the Beehive.
Gerrard Eckhoff
Alexandra