N.C.H.B. cardiac unit remote hope

Press, 10 September 1983, Page 9

N.C.H.B. cardiac unit remote hope

By

BRIAR WHITEHEAD,

in Wellington The North Canterbury Hospital Board can say goodbye to its hopes for a cardiac unit or bone marrow transplant unit for Christchurch in the Government’s high technology package for hospitals. The Cabinet is expected to give approval in principle soon to the package, after which the Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm, will hold discussions with hospital boards over their requests.

The high technology package is put together every three years after hospital boards present their lists to the Government. This year the Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Palmerston North, Wellington and North Canterbusj? hospital boards are vying?for Government funds

marked for high technology projects.

The North Canterbury Hospital Board has submitted 18 requests, with overwhelming priority going to a cardiac unit. A bonemarrow transplant unit is well up the list. But the Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm, has persisently said that health funds will not be spent on an extra cardiac unit, but into producing the highest standards of surgery and fast through-put at existing cardiac units. He has also said that child oncology research is progressing so fast that a bone marrow transplant unit, if it were set up, would be outmoded within months. He sees bone marrow transplants as a normal pajt of child oncology work it, hospitals, and plans' F two

centres in New Zealand capable of performing transplants when necessary. He also says that advances in the field are so fast that bone-marrow operations can increasingly be avoided by early alternative medical treatments. The amount that the Government is prepared to make available in high-cost technology funds is classified information, but it is known that the North Canterbury list would be more than six times as costly to fill as Auckland’s.

The cost of the request of the five other boards is about equal to the cost of Christchurch’s list. Those close to the allocation exercise say Christchurch will be very disappointed, and will probably get three of its nine priority requests.

They deny that the city is being short-changed on its high-technology because it has received the go-ahead for the new main block of a planned $95 million Christchurch Hospital redevelopment.

The nine priority requests the board made are for a cardiac unit at a cost of $1 million to set up and $1.5 million to run each year, up-dated diagnostic radiology equipment and services ($200,000); virology diagnosis improvements ($250,000); improved microvascular services ($500,000 in capital costs and $195,000 annually for maintenance); bone-mar-row unit ($200,000 to set up and $500,000 to run); improved neonatal services at Christchurch Women’s Hospital for low-weight and high tftsk babies ($300,000); extenspan of the hyperbaric

oxygen unit, which treats divers’ nitrogen narcosis, into cancer-retardation treatment ($100,000); improved ophthalmology services ($100,000); and a training programme in kidney transplant ($220,000). The North Canterbury board does not have too high hopes pinned on the high-technology package.

Its chairman, Mr T. C. Grigg, said the board had done well in the last allocation when it received the C.A.T. scanner used mostly for neurological work. “We got more than our share last time,” he said. “And we are obviously getting our share with the bigger capital things at the moment.”

That included Qjvernment approval to rahtinue

planning for the redevelopment main block, for a cardiac catheterisation laboratory and for a $5.5 million department of physical medicine at Burwood Hospital. Mr Grigg said a cardiac surgery unit was automatically the top priority each year and one which he hoped would be approved soon. The board felt that Christchurch should get a unit like other big centres but it was a national issue.

Priority was given to a bone marrow transplant unit because Christchurch doctors were performing operations which had as high a success rate as anywhere else in the world.

However, there were other treatment methods and overseas research could lead to changed thinking.