Hospitals stretched -Clark

Press, 28 April 1989, Page 2

Hospitals stretched -Clark

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

Changes to the health system stem from it having more demands on it than it could bear, and not as a result of lack of funds, according to the Minister of Health, Ms Clark.

She told the Institute of Business Management in Wellington yesterday that the challenges the health system faced did not arise from lack of generosity by the Government. Over the last four years the Government had increased real spending on health more than 20 per cent.

Changes were more a result of having to deal with a combination of continually increasing demand for services, a continually increasing supply of high-cost technology, and a reluctance on the part of many to accept that there was a limit to the curative services a society could provide at any time, Ms Clark said.

More resources needed to be concentrated on health and less on sickness. In the past sickness had often been the focus of the health system. . The demand for hospital services was close to infinite, she said, as was the scope of new technological inventions designed to provide marginal improvements in the ability to cure or repair patients.

Yet it was unrealistic to aim to provide cures for all problems for all people. It was much more realistic to use more of the resources to improve the health of the population and, in so doing, to minimise the need for curative services.

Setting up area health boards meant that the management of hospital

services could be integrated with sickness prevention and health promotion, Ms Clark said.

There was then a much better chance that resources could be reallocated between the areas so more emphasis could be put on health promotion and sickness prevention.

Unlike other local authorities, hospital and area health boards did not raise their own money, she said. It was very tempting for boards always to blame the problems on central Government for not providing enough funds. 1

Yet the demands for health care were likely to be infinite. Regardless of the extent of the funds provided, there must still be hard decisions taken on the margin about which services to provide.