Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) executive director Sarah Dalton.
Photo: Supplied / LDR
The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) union represents senior doctors who work in the country s hospitals.
Executive director Sarah Dalton said Counties Manukau DHB needed to receive more funding to address its surgery backlog, and there also needed to be the people available to carry out the operations. There s a limit to how many weekends doctors, anaesthetists and nurses are going to be willing to work in the face of being abandoned by the government, she said. There s been a real loss of goodwill [due to the pay freeze] and I don t think it s just doctors that are affected, a lot of nurses will be voting with their feet on this one.
Wednesday, 5 May 2021, 1:45 pm
The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Toi Mata
Hauora says the Government’s ongoing public sector pay
restraint is a kick in the teeth to senior doctors and
dentists who keep core health services going and have kept
New Zealanders safe and cared for during the Covid-19
pandemic.
In a press release on the Government’s
Workforce Policy Statement, Public Service Minister Chris
Hipkins has ruled out pay increases for those earning over
$100,000 for the next three years.
ASMS Executive
Director Sarah Dalton says senior doctors and dentists will
find it galling as it sends a harsh message to health
Braden Fastier/Stuff
Health Minister Andrew Little announces the next tranche of funding for the Government’s roll-out of frontline services nationwide to support people with mild to moderate mental health and addiction needs. “I m not convinced it was,” he said. “When you look at the demographics of our elected DHB representatives across the county, they weren t particularly representative of a whole heap of communities.” The reforms provided an opportunity to strengthen and enrich community input into health services, Little said. That goal would be achieved via locality planning networks with appointed members. Those “localities” still needed to be worked out. They might be geographical or represent a community of interest spanning more than one geographical area. The members of those networks would then “work up a health plan” and get agreement with local iwi.
Children s Commissioner Andrew Becroft and Health Minister Andrew Little.
Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King, Samuel Rillstone
Yesterday, RNZ revealed that Pharmac is likely to end the blanket provision of child cancer drugs.
Pharmac said it had long viewed the special exemption for child cancer drugs as inconsistent but it was jolted into finally addressing the issue in response to a discrimination claim taken under the Human Rights Act.
In the claim, the regulator was questioned over why it was funding all child cancer drugs but would not fund Spinraza for about 35 children with spinal muscular atrophy, a deadly genetic condition.
It said no final decisions had been made but the most likely outcome of its review would be to bring child cancer drugs into the normal Pharmac process.
Thursday, 29 April 2021, 3:48 pm
More than eight decades of health reform have failed, and
the current landscape of public and private healthcare
interests is unstable, say New Zealand researchers Murray
Horn and Des Gorman. Future reform must improve equality of
access and outcome, they say.
These proved to be key
drivers behind the health sector reforms announced today by
Health Minister Andrew Little.
“We will do away with
duplication and unnecessary bureaucracy between regions, so
that our health workers can do what they do best – keep
people well,” says Little.
“The reforms will mean
that for the first time, we will have a truly national