The Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal is happening in slow motion in New Zealand, says Dr Hein Stander, the President of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).
The severe compromising of patient care at Stafford Hospital in the UK, run by the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, has been labelled one of the worst hospital scandals in recent times.
Dr Stander says official inquiries attributed the Mid-Staffordshire situation to three things that were fundamentally wrong: a focus on finance at the expense of patient care, an attitude that patient care was someone else’s problem, and defensiveness and complacency.
He told delegates at the ASMS Annual Conference in Wellington today that, if asked three years ago if the same situation could occur in New Zealand, he would have said it was unlikely.
“But I am telling you today that we are having a Mid-Staffs, it is just happening in slow motion,” he told the conference. “Unlike Mid-Staffs in the UK, we are slowly warming up the frog in the water and it will eventually be boiled before anybody realises it.”
Dr Stander pointed to New Zealand’s high levels of unmet health need and longstanding shortages of specialists in public hospitals.
“We’re seeing a constant stream of reports of patients unable to access health care, with some people resorting to selling their homes to pay for surgery they need. People are living with chronic pain and losing their mobility and independence.
“We’re also seeing the impact of this situation on senior doctors and dentists, along with other health professionals, with research identifying high levels of presenteeism and burnout. Senior doctors are struggling to provide timely health care to patients and they’re increasingly buckling under the pressure.
“As a country, we risk becoming desensitised to this situation. We risk seeing it as normal to have a public health system under so much strain and so under-funded. Urgent action is needed to address the vulnerability of the senior medical and dental workforce in DHBs and by doing so improve patient access to secondary care.
Dr Stander challenged the Government, its agencies and DHBs to take responsibility for properly funding the provision of health services, and he urged senior doctors and others to continue advocating for quality, timely patient care.
The full text of Dr Stander’s address can be read here
