MEDIA RELEASE
For immediate use
24 November 2016
Independent investigation needed into Waikato DHB orthopaedics revelations
The union for senior doctors working in New Zealand’s public hospitals is calling for an independent investigation into
the orthopaedics situation at Waikato District Health Board following revelations that managers are over-riding clinical
decisions.
Ian Powell, the Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS), says the situation at
Waikato is very serious and the concerns of orthopaedic surgeons there need to be investigated. In order to avoid a
predictable white-wash, the investigation would need to be agreed with the orthopaedic surgeons.
He was commenting on reports that a group of orthopaedic surgeons has accused Waikato DHB managers of stopping them from
making follow-up checks on patients so they could assess new patients instead to meet national health targets (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1=11753565 and http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201825132/waikato-hospital-surgeons-say-patients-at-risk-from-targets).
A letter signed by 13 orthopaedic surgeons at Waikato Hospital said the department no longer had faith in management,
that Waikato Hospital was no longer a safe place to practise elective surgery, and that to block doctors from patients
was “immoral, unethical and dangerous”. They referred specifically to the management decision to cancel patient
follow-up clinics because they are not counted for the official target.
Mr Powell says that this is a shocking situation that needs to be urgently addressed in the interests of patient safety.
“This focus on meeting a national target at the expense of clinical judgement is obviously an untended consequence of
having health targets which carry financial penalties if they are not achieved,” he says.
“Unfortunately, the situation at Waikato DHB can also be sheeted home to the increasingly dictatorial management culture
there where hospital bosses feel free to override clinical advice and work on the basis of ‘do as I say’. A culture like
that doesn’t make for good health care.”
He pointed to an address by ASMS National President Dr Hein Stander to the ASMS annual conference in Wellington last
week and his comments that the Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal was happening in New Zealand in slow motion.
In his speech, Dr Stander noted that the failings of patient care in the Mid-Staffordshire situation had been attributed
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. His full speech is available at http://www.asms.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Presidential-Address-2016_166947.1.pdf .
ENDS