900 patients on a single waiting list? Public suffering drives private profit.
It's so bad for Hawkes Bay women, they started their own Facebook support group.
Quotes of note:
Over 900 women are on a waiting list for gynaecology care (often for pelvic pain or bleeding)
50 women who joined a Facebook group she recently started called “Hawke’s Bay Gynaecologist Crisis”.
As of June 30, there were 912 women on Hawke’s Bay’s Gynaecology Specialist Outpatient Waitlist.
Many women aren’t even referred as their cases are considered low priority or are outright declined.
“Doctors aren’t even referring because they’re like, ‘well, you’re not going to get seen’.” [This is absolutely true.]
She believes addressing the waitlist requires more than adding appointments. There aren’t enough doctors, theatre spaces, money.
But that doesn’t mean we need to lose the women and the whānau at the centre of it, which this system has done,” she says.
900 women on a surgical waiting list…for a single speciality, gynaecology…waiting months and years…if they don’t get knocked off the waiting list, or denied outright.
Lives (and ‘economic productivity’—something Seymour only pays lipservice to) ruined waiting for surgeries to stop them being in pain, or bleeding.
And the patients, the victims really, left saying there’s no money left for healthcare.