Crisis for health services rejected

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 5

Crisis for health services rejected

No ’’all-enveloping crisis" existed in the health services, said the Minister of Health, Dr Bassett, in Christchurch last evening. In his address at the graduation of allied health professional groups at Christchurch Hospital, Dr Bassett warned the graduands not to believe the headlines.

“There are problems, but nothing that cannot be solved where there is a will,” he said.

Statistics showed that more operations were being done in the public sector than ever before, more outpatients were being seen, there were more community services, and the efficiency level in hospitals in Christchurch has never been equalled in New Zealand’s history of the public sector. But it did need .help,

and it needed the faith and commitment of taxpayers and those working within it.

The growth factor in the public hospital budget for the next financial year equalled the total allowance for growth from 1981 to 1984.

Staffing figures had been revised, Dr Bassett said, and this included increases in training numbers. “We must all work to see that the new salary scales for staff — and I appreciate that not all of you have yet completed your negotiations, but they look good — result in those staff vacancies being filled,” he said.

Dr Bassett said that all public sector settlements had seen increases in excess of the private sector and . many were twice as

much. “That should be the secret to better performance in the public sector, to reduced waiting lists and thereby to an increase in the public’s confidence in the public hospital sector,” he said. He appealed to the , graduands never to run down the public sector, never to belittle it “and never question the willpower of this Government to sustain it” One section of the ceremony was missing — the graduating medical technologists, because of their recent dispute over pay settlements with the Government boycotted the graduation. Dr Bassett referred’the boycott only oncep~* when he mentioned the' ■ laboratory workers as “our absent friends.”