Catchup may have backfired
THE Southern District Health Board’s hard work to catch up on surgery postponed because of the Covid19 lockdown may have backfired, as the organisation is still waiting to be told it will be paid for that work.
Without confirmation the Ministry of Health will pay for those operations, the SHDB might need to scale back how many surgeries it carried out to meet financial targets, chief executive Chris Fleming said in a report to the board.
‘‘Other DHBs have delayed their recovery awaiting confirmation of funding, but we do not believe patients should have to wait simply while funding arrangements were sourced as this simply delayed patients further than necessary,’’ Mr Fleming said.
‘‘If we do not receive confirmation of this funding prior to the final audited results being produced, we will need to deteriorate our performance to not impact 202021.’’
The SDHB quickly put a surgical recovery plan in place after the Covid19 lockdown lifted.
The ministry had asked all DHBs to attempt to deliver up to 85% of planned surgery in June.
The SDHB, which postponed about 1200 operations during lockdown, not only achieved 100% of target, but also performed an extra 200 operations above target through initiatives such as running weekend clinics.
‘‘This came at an outsourced cost of approximately $1.2 million,’’ Mr Fleming said.
‘‘We have assumed that the volume in excess of our plan for the month will be able to be recovered from additional planned care revenue.’’
However that has not been confirmed, leaving the SDHB’s already parlous finances further stretched — and meaning a question mark remained over whether it should continue to try to clear the backlog of procedures.
But Mr Fleming stood by the SDHB’s ‘‘assertive approach’’ to get as many people’s operations performed as quickly as possible. ‘‘This was great from the perspective of delivering more surgery to our population and recovering quickly and is a credit to the hard work of all who are involved in perioperative surgery.
‘‘In the background we now need to ensure that the additional activity is recognised as part of recovery efforts and funded accordingly.’’
Papers to be presented to the board meeting tomorrow said the SDHB’s year end net result was a $49 million deficit; it had budgeted on a deficit of $38.5 million.
The board has now sent the second draft of its annual plan to the ministry for approval, and been granted an extension until August 15 to lodge its statement of performance expectations.