Simeon Brown knew Public Health privatization was wrong
Warnings about serious risks in surgery outsourcing blanked out by Simeon Brown’s office
The health minister has been warned of a large number of serious risks around outsourcing thousands of surgeries to private hospitals to cut public waitlists.
But Simeon Brown’s office withheld most of the information from the public.
Two versions of the same memo about the risks and how to deal with them were released to RNZ – one heavily blanked out by the minister, one not – by Health New Zealand (HNZ).
The full memo from HNZ warned it might be “tempting” to aim for “speedier” cuts to wait times, but that going too fast risked significantly distorting the system in four ways.
“Any degradation of the ability to maintain staffing in public will significantly threaten overall production and hospital flow, including for acute work.”
This was blanked out of the Brown memo, as were all the details of all four risks.
One risk the unredacted memo showed was the loss of specialist surgeons, anaesthetists and medical imaging technicians from public health to private hospitals. Technicians had already been lost “as the private sector dramatically enhanced salaries to attract staff”.
If the new outsourcing push also led to loss of staff, “waiting times for cases not suitable for outsourcing will likely increase”.
These unsuitable cases were the complex ones, “particularly cancer surgery”. Private hospitals typically do more simple operations.
Another risk was “degradation” in training junior doctors publicly. If simple operations shifted to private, that was where the bigger training opportunities would be.
RNZ
I tell you week after week after week that this hard right Government are mutilating public health for private corporate health interests and people still don’t seem to comprehend it!
Simeon Brown KNEW that if you had seen the advice warning against handing private companies these huge 10 year corporate welfare deal, you might have woken up and suddenly understood culture war bullshit doesn’t matter nearly as much as your public health service falling over.
Do Culture War Boomers have so much private health insurance they don’t care about the local hospital anymore than they care about the long term impacts of global warming?
This…
Elective surgery waits: How private hospitals plan to cut backlogs
Health Minister Simeon Brown has told Health NZ (HNZ), the Crown’s behemoth healthcare provider, to outsource the volume of elective surgeries necessary to meet targets and to lock in private sector delivery with long-term contracts; he’s asked for the first five-year contracts by early next year, and contracts of up to 10years thereafter.
NZ Herald
…as Nicola Willis demands another half a million out of health…
Public sector bosses ordered to look again for new cost savings
Newsroom understands the coalition Government is once again calling on public service agencies to sharpen their pencils, as the finance minister hunts for efficiencies ahead of next year’s Budget.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis tells Newsroom details of the Budget process are confidential and that no decisions have been made by Cabinet yet. Other ministers are remaining similarly tight-lipped.
But sources tell Newsroom letters of expectation have been sent to public service chief executives, once again drawing their attention to the spending of taxpayer money and asking them to look at their spending to see where savings could be made.
Newsroom
…as the impacts of cutting Health IT budgets occur…
Auckland and Northland hospitals hit by major IT outage, chaos in EDs
Hospitals across the North Island have been hit by a major IT outage, impacting access to crucial patient information and causing chaos in emergency rooms.
From late yesterday, the outage took down ED, laboratory and inpatient systems in Auckland and Northland.
This forced nurses and doctors to resort to manual back-ups, paper-based systems and whiteboards overnight.
The Public Service Association (PSA) said nurses had to take on admin tasks, creating “chaos” in EDs and other departments.
This incident had “potentially deadly consequences for patients”, the PSA said.
NZ Herald
…and cutbacks make Public health dangerous…
Wellington Hospital Emergency Department went into code red nearly twice a day in 2025
Wellington Hospital’s emergency department went into its most critical code red status on average nearly twice a day between January and October last year.
RNZ
…let’s be clear.
All those NZ First voters dependent on Public Health are slashing their own throats.
All those who are voting National are vandalising their own public health.
All those who aren’t voting are burning their own hospitals.
National are mutilating our public health system into a privatised American one and you are letting them
