Spin masks underlying problems at new surgical centre

Waitemata District Health Board’s insistence on a public-private partnership model for elective surgery at North Shore Hospital flies in the face of strident opposition from the very people who are going to be required to work in it, says Labour’s Health Spokesperson, Maryan Street.

“Clinicians have labelled the model highly divisive and a threat to the public health system.

“What we are seeing here is the introduction of a really easy way of doing private practice in a public facility. This is a public-private partnership model where private will gain and public will inevitably lose.

“Doctors working in the new Centre would be engaged as private contractors, not as DHB employees. Their employment will be structured in such a way that they would work only in their own time, not on DHB time, but there is no doubt that their DHB time will be reduced to accommodate the new private arrangement.

“If someone is going to be paid around $7500 day to do private work there, who wouldn’t want to reduce their DHB hours?

“This is another example of public money being used for private gain. The DHB is covering up the discord that exists amongst the very people required to deliver all the benefits the DHB says will result from this new ‘package of care’ approach.

“In addition there are concerns that surgeons who work in the Centre will not take on teaching functions, thus depriving junior doctors of many training opportunities they might normally have access to.

“They will simply go in, perform as many surgeries as they can cram into one day and then see the same patients in their private clinics, for more money than they would get as DHB employees.

“This is a two-tier health care system in the making.”