Health Minister Bill English - No Plans to Remove Elective Surgery

Health Minister Bill English said today decisions about future elective surgery would be driven from a clinically-based Hospital Plan not a series of cuts to fit a budget.

"The final spread of services in our hospitals will be set out in the Hospital Plan, not a leaked middle level bureaucrat's memo.

"We need to give communities the certainty of knowing what services will be available at the hospital when they need it. That is why we're developing the Hospital Plan," Mr English said.

"You can't make any changes to elective surgery or any other hospital services in isolation because all services are interrelated. Developing the Hospital plan involves taking a good hard look at all those interrelated services.

"The leaked Health Funding Authority memo takes an approach that is no longer good enough. It assumes you can just keep taking one more slice off services in a hospital to fit the budget and hope what's left is enough.

"The Hospital Plan is being developed by looking at what people need, not what money is left over for a hospital," Mr English said.

"It's a revolutionary approach to determining what acute and emergency services will be provided across New Zealand.

"I have said to the health agencies, let's put the money aside and let's sort out what you need clinically to run a good acute and emergency services in places like Gisborne, Wanganui, the West Coast and Invercargill.

"Smaller New Zealand centres have traditionally lived in fear of losing services. Staff in their hospitals, and the people who use those hospitals, have lived with constant uncertainty fuelled by political arguments about what services they were about to lose.

"People want more certainty and I am going to provide it. The Hospital Plan will set out what services people can expect in their town and in their neighbouring city in the next five years," Mr English said.