Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Luke Bradford: Royal College of GPs Medical Director on referrals not making it onto medical waitlists

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Luke Bradford: Royal College of GPs Medical Director on referrals not making it onto medical waitlists · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Gps are warning that patients who desperately need hospital treatment
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: are increasingly not even making it onto waiting lists. A
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: later lea to the media from Palveston North Hospital's Orthopedic
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Clinic to a GP earlier this year confirms referrals are
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: being knocked back due to a lack of resources. What
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: executive does this mean?
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Look?
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  Speaker 1: Bradford is the Royal New Zealand College of GP's medical
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: directors with us this morning.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Look, good morning morning, Ryan. How are you?
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I'm well, thank you? What exactly is the problem here?
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: So there's always been a way of triaging patients according
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: to need, but traditionally that level and what society would
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: accept is that level of need would be justifiable, that
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  Speaker 2: people would have conditions seen when they needed to be
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: seen to manage their symptoms. What's happening is as demands
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: go on the system and it's creaking and we know
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: the health targets. Have people been seen, have been four
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: months and operated on quickly. One way of managing that
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: is to not take patients onto lists in the first place.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: So patients who would ordinarily go on to a list
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  Speaker 1: are not being put onto a list. And this is
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  Speaker 1: a new thing. After the targets have been introduced or
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: has this always happened?
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  Speaker 2: So it's always happened the list, The acceptance level fluctuates,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: it goes up and down according to demand. But when
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: the system is under pressure, often that threshold rises, and
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: so people have to have to be really, really unwell
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: or really disabled in order to be seen. What we're
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: not having is confirmation, but it's occurring. But it seems
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: anecdotally that that's likely.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: When you say they have to be how disabled do
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: you have to be to need a knee replacement?
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Ah? I mean it can be really bad at the moment.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: I've had patients who are essentially in wheelchairs are still
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: waiting nine to twelve months having to go onto opioid medicines,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: needing full time care. It can be quite severe.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And these people you're talking about, if you're on opioids
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  Speaker 1: and you're in a wheelchair because you need a new replacement,
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  Speaker 1: surely you're on the list.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're on the list. Just the list is long.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: So if you could right, okay, listen is very long,
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  Speaker 1: but if you can walk, you may not be on
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  Speaker 1: the list.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Ah. I think that's it's not necessarily that black and white.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: But often people will get put on the list and
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: then week so long with they'll end up in a
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  Speaker 2: chair by the time they are operating them.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, Luke, thank you for that. Luke Bradford, who's the
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Royal New Zealand College of GP's medical director. I mean
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: it's not great, is it. If you're in a wheelchair
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: on opioids and not on a waiting list, please text
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: me because you should be for goodness sakes.
• 2:51
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• 2:54
  Speaker 2: to news Talks.
• 2:54
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• 2:58
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