Big rise in Hawke’s Bay surgery waits
The number of people waiting more than the maximum four months for surgery in Hawke’s Bay has rocketed to 673, and the district health board can’t say when the backlog will be cleared, as required by the Ministry of Health.
Of those 673, about two-thirds, or 446, have been waiting six months or longer.
Covid-19 has had an impact on the numbers, though they were already high – in February the number waiting four months or longer was already at 500.
Under Health Ministry requirements, if a DHB confirms to a patient that it can provide treatment, it must provide the treatment within four months of making the decision to treat.
When asked when the number of people waiting four months or longer would be at zero, acting chief operating officer Chris Ash would not provide an answer.
Instead, he would only say that addressing the waiting list ‘‘is a focus of the DHB’s recovery programme post the Covid pandemic and the DHB is actively working to address this backlog with a range of providers’’.
The total waiting list (including those waiting less than four months) stood at 1657.
Before Covid-19, about 375 onsite elective operations were completed per month.
Ash said the DHB hoped to be operating at 80 per cent of this by the end of this month, and back to the full 375 by September.
‘‘Alert level 2 restrictions in theatre and the need for Personal Protective Equipment [PPE] and social distancing requirements and surgical case complexities are all factors in limiting the number of operations at the moment,’’ he said
A progress update would be provided at this month’s board meeting.
Health Minister David Clark did not answer the question of how many people across all DHBs had been waiting more than four months for their elective surgery.
He said preliminary data suggested that across all DHBs, about 8500 elective and acute inpatient surgeries and 11,000 minor surgeries were deferred because of the Covid-19 lockdown.
‘‘The Government’s swift action to move to lockdown prevented New Zealand’s hospitals being overrun with Covid-19. Our low case numbers mean hospitals are now able to get back to a new normal – including the resumption of higher volumes of planned care such as electives,’’ he said. Clark said Budget 2020 included a one-off investment of $282.5 million to fund a catch-up campaign following the disruption caused by Covid-19, and this would fund about 153,000 additional surgeries and procedures, radiology scans and first specialist appointments over the next three years.
‘‘We are aiming to not only address the current backlog, but also tackle waiting times over the period of the three-year initiative,’’ Clark said.
‘‘DHBs are still dealing with the need to provide additional infection control and using physical spaces differently due to the risk of Covid-19.
‘‘This means that it is likely that delivery will not return to pre-Covid-19 levels at the moment,’’ he said.
‘‘There was already a waiting list before Covid-19 and Budget 2020 also included additional funding of $125.4m to cover the impact of demographic changes and increased costs,’’ Clark said
Of the 673 people waiting more than four months for surgery in Hawke’s Bay, 446 have been waiting six months or longer.