DHB targets ‘saved lives’

Patients would likely get sicker and, in some cases, die unnecessarily because of the Government’s decision to axe health targets, says National.

The Opposition has accused the Government of playing politics with the health system, after it emerged that the national health targets were no longer being reported.

This was revealed only when it was noticed that the country’s district health boards (DHBs) had not released their figures for the past two quarters and

Stuff queried Health Minister David Clark about the data.

The status of a project to publicly report surgical unmet need is also being questioned, with the Health Ministry failing to update its ‘‘National Patient Flow’’ figures since Septemberlast year.

National Party leader Simon Bridges said it was ‘‘absolutely outrageous’’ to can health targets.

‘‘Basically, it’s about removing accountability to them and I really fear what we’re going to see is what we saw under the last Labour Government. That is, a lot more money going in but a lot less surgeries and things that matter to New Zealanders, like cancer treatment and the like.

‘‘I think this is outrageous and I’m really worried about it – it’s a prime area we need to hold the Government to account on.’’

Bridges said he remembered the health system under the Helen Clark government, when he entered Parliament as a new MP.

‘‘The queues, the waitlists for hip operations, for cataract operations – I fear over time, under this Government, we will go back to that because they don’t know how to manage things, because they don’t want to be accountable on the targets.’’

It was a move that could cost lives, he said. ‘‘Over time, dropping the targets and losing the accountability will mean more illnesses and more fatalities in our health system that could have been prevented.’’

National’s health spokesman, Michael Woodhouse, has cited research published last year in The

New Zealand Medical Journal that thousands of lives were believed to have been saved, in particular by a target to reduce emergency department (ED) waiting times, halving the number of deaths.

That peer-reviewed research showed EDs were running more efficiently than they were before the target was introduced in 2009; patients were waiting about three hours less to be admitted to a ward.

Health Minister David Clark has said the targets created ‘‘perverse incentives’’, particularly in relation to surgery.

Labour, since being in Opposition, has claimed the DHBs were performing easier surgeries to boost their monthly reporting numbers, which meant more complicated and often more serious surgeries were being bumped.

But although DHBs do measure the ‘‘case weight’’ complexity indexes of the surgeries they perform, only anecdotal evidence of that has been cited.

Clark has given an assurance that more surgeries would be performedt.

‘‘As minister, I’m concerned about the perverse incentives that exist under the existing targets, whereby we’ve had what were traditionally cheaper surgeries performed in more expensive environments and so not spending the health dollar as wisely as it could be spent,’’ he said.

‘‘... a lot more money going in but a lot less surgeries and things that matter to New Zealanders, like cancer treatment and the like.’’