Public Healthcare: the sicker they make it, the bigger the private profit

Just think how much worse it'll be when they take another $1.4 billion away from Health NZ.

One way of maximising productivity is to hire healthcare assistants for specialised staff like nurses. And helper staff for doctors wasting time on paperwork and admin tasks. And fixing a broken IT system.

I've been working as a doctor here for 17 years and this has always been a low-hanging fruit to make the Healthcare system more productive. Yeah we've never really done it, in general choosing DIY solutions. But it's gotten much worse now. A doubling down of inefficiency and wasted money. To the point where it looks intentional.

Instead of efficiency, some 'frontline' Healthcare Assistants are being trained to cover reception and telephonists' jobs due to a unwise hiring freeze on "back-office" staff.

You know, the staff that keep a hospital running.

Nurses are pushing beds and cleaning. They always have done too much of this but now it's even worse. Vacancies abound, yet support staff hiring and infrastructure revitalisation is frozen.

The funding for the IT renewal has literally been spent elsewhere.

(But luckily the funding to make even millionaire real estate investors richer sailed through as a priority)

And the health Minister now wants to replace doctors with unsupervised untegulated fake doctors called 'physician associates': a role that started out 20 years as a 'physician's assistant', but morphed into 'Physician Associate' (blurring the lines so the public thinks they are doctors) as they pushed to practise unsupervised... to replace doctors, with a 'provider' with just the tiniest fraction of real doctor's education and training experience.

…with a significant  number of very high-profile bad outcomes, most notably in recent months in the UK, where numerous lawsuits from patients and specialists are currently working their way through the legal system.

It hasn't worked out well, but it has worked out cheap! At least in dollars, if you ignore quality of care.

As the UK recoils in horror from how reckless their policy on Physician Associates has been, Messrs. Luxon Reti and Levy have doubled down. As a recent Herald article said, government is full-speed ahead on the fake doctor model. (Not for themselves of course, but for the public system.)

And the public now have no choice: when government will support landlords and road building corporations, yet people can't see a GP or get off a hospital waiting list, patients are stuffed. They've got to take whatever they can get. It's not right but it is profitable.

This is New Zealand's golden era of Private healthcare and Private hospitals. Tragic for New Zealanders, but fantastic for corporate owners.

Expect to see more doctors and nurses jump ship to private, or Australia. People with a choice and some mobility are fleeing.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/health-new-zealand-spent-millions-more-on-contractors-and-consultants-last-financial-year/Z7GMVET6ZRGQXNCEDLWYIKYPR4/