Resurrecting New Zealand's public healthcare system or a charity hospital in every town?

ABSTRACT

Radical market-oriented health reforms in New Zealand in the early 1990s failed to deliver key financial targets, resulted in unnecessary patient deaths, adversely affected public healthcare services, induced serious tensions between clinicians and managers and encouraged a predisposition to private healthcare. A more co-operative health system was implemented in the late 1990s but remaining problems of inadequate patient access led to establishment of a charity hospital in Christchurch which, by November 2018, had registered over 18 000 patient visits. This is one indication of the need to resurrect our public healthcare system. In this paper, we discuss briefly the health reforms of the 1990s then, for discussion and debate, provide seven suggestions for how this resurrection might be achieved thereby avoiding the need for charity hospitals throughout the country.