Andrew Connolly: Counties Manukau chief medical officer on private hospitals potentially bringing healthcare waitlists down

There's support for more use of private hospitals to help the health system.

Minister Shane Reti's outlined plans for reaching five health targets set in March, spanning wait times, immunisations and cancer treatment.

He's discussed increasing public hospital beds and operating theatres and using private hospital capacity more.

Counties Manukau chief medical officer Andrew Connolly says private healthcare will help get wait lists down.

"Most of the work will still be done, however, in public facilities. We don't want to lose staff to private just to do public work."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good afternoon. Do you remember those five performance targets the
government has set for Health New Zealand. It includes improving
cancer treatment, cutting emergency department wait times, cutting the time
you have to wait to see a specialist, and so on.
Health New Zealand has just today revealed how they're going
to do that. Andrew Connolly is the chief medical officer
at County's manecou Hey.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Andrew, Hey, Heather, how are you very well?

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Thank you? Thanks for your tom Now you're going to
get the private hospitals to help out here. How much
more expensive is using private than public?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well you'd have to ask the finance guys that, but
not everything's more expensive in private. I think the key
thing for listeners is that private has for a long
time been part of our armentarium and it's got to
be part of the solution to getting the waiting list down.
Most of the work will still be done however in

(00:49):
public facilities, you know, we don't want to lose staff
to private just to do public work etc.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, I mean, I know you guys are under the
pump public, but what about private? Do they have much capacity?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Look, I think they're obviously pretty busy if they're bit
of New Zealand healthcare occurs in private hospitals anyway. Of course,
most occurs in private and general practice. But from say
the surgical waiting list point of view, private has some capacity.
It probably you'd have to ask Private Surgical Association, but
it probably varies a bit with the economy and things. So,

(01:23):
you know, but we've always used some private capacity and
we've used it well, and that's a partnership we need
to keep developing to get the best for the public.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
One of the other parts of your plan is to
expand the number of beds in operating theaters in hospitals
and existing hospitals. How much is that going to cost?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, again, you really don't want me talking about money.
I can't balance a cheppok operating rooms much.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, then let me ask you this with what money,
because you don't have any.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, So look, operating rooms aren't cheap, so that the
key focus for people like me is on using our
existing facilities more efficiently and more effectively. So at the moment,
you know, we do have operating rooms that aren't fully
used because we don't have all the staff we need.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
So, which is bringing me to the next question. I
was going to ask you with what staff because you
don't have money for staff either.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, we have to make sure we're investing in the
right stuff. So that's where I think the Commissioner has
less The Leivey has been very clear. Certainly I know
it counties. We're fortunate to have more antheus coming, but
there's also things we can do to try and make

(02:42):
our existing use the resources more efficient. And this is
not saying the workforce is working harder, because frankly they can't.
This is working a bit smarter and that's a challenge
we've had for many years. It's been made a lot
worse since we had co IT and then the border closures,
border reopening and things. But you know, there's actually for

(03:05):
many services around the country because there's it's not just operations.
You obviously need to be seen in the first place,
to be assessed for the need for treatment and what
the diagnosis is, and that's called a first specialist assessment.
And we're actually starting to see some real progress in
weighing times and many services starting to come down right
across the country. You know, it's it's like it's green shoots.

(03:29):
We haven't got a fully fledged green lawn yet, but
it's encouraging to do the progress certainly compared with a
year ago.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Well, and please, are you're sounding optimistic?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Andrew?

Speaker 1 (03:36):
I really appreciated doctor Andrew Connelly, Chief Medical Officer Counties manicure.
Does it sound to you like they kind of know
how to do it, but they may have a problem
with money. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen
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