Dr Richard Sullivan: Health NZ chief clinical officer on patients being declined for specialist appointments based on BMI - Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

Health NZ is pushing back against the claims patients in Porirua have been declined specialist appointments based on their body mass indexes.

A group of Porirua GPs have claimed their patients had been rejected for general and orthopaedic surgeries based on BMI - and they fear it's a tactic to manage waiting lists.

Health NZ's Chief Clinical Officer, Dr Richard Sullivan, has stepped up to deny these claims.

"We're not using what we call body mass index, which is really a combination of someone's height and weight, to manage wait-lists, that's absolutely not true."

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