Health experts call for a national survey to measure unmet need for elective surgery
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Loading... - Harris Jake
- 03 Feb 2023
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A group of Canterbury surgeons say New Zealand is behind other developed countries in measuring unmet secondary elective healthcare needs and is calling for a national survey.
In an editorial published in the New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday, co-author and Canterbury Charity Hospital founder Phil Bagshaw and his colleagues said unmet secondary elective healthcare need – non-urgent hospital treatment – has never been appropriately measured by the New Zealand Government or the Ministry of Health.
Bagshaw said there are both humanitarian and economic reasons for doing the survey.
“It’s not good enough, it’s like a great big black hole in our knowledge which could easily be filled.”
The unmet need for primary (GP) health care is measured each year as part of the New Zealand Health Survey, but unmet secondary elective healthcare need (USEHN) is not.
Bagshaw said routine surveys of USEHN are vital measures of how well a country’s healthcare system is functioning and are necessary for international benchmarking.
The report said the Government and the ministry had made “deliberate efforts to frustrate the measurement of USEHN by obfuscation and a petty attempt at avoidance of media attention to this issue”.
“It is reasonable to wonder whether they really wish to know its true extent. Read More…
