Yeswecare forum targets health budget

Issues of substandard care and a $215 million gap in what is needed to fund the country’s health services will make health a key election topic, a forum has heard.

Personal stories of inadequate care dominated the Public Service Association’s Yeswecare campaign event in Christchurch at the weekend, attended by more than 100 patients, former patients and health workers

Organiser Marney Ainsworth said the forum would help build a coalition to gain improved health services and resourcing, but people needed to work together.

‘‘Nothing is going to be handed to us on a plate. We’re going to have to campaign for it.’’

Underfunding of health was taken as a given, but Council of Trade Unions (CTU) economist Bill Rosenberg presented his analysis of Budget 2017 to underline the scale of the problem.

Health was given $215m less than what was needed: for new services, the pay equity settlement for care workers, increasing costs, population growth and the effects of an ageing population, he said.

Minister of Health Jonathan Coleman dismissed the analysis, saying the CTU was a critic of the Government and ‘‘it’s an election year’’.

Many of those at Saturday’s forum were people who had received substandard care and were now trying to help others in similar situations.

Robert Read, who talked about his experience accessing mental health services, asked for a minute’s silence for people lost to suicide, including a friend who had died a month earlier.

He and Rochelle Carey shared their stories of being turned away by emergency department (ED) staff after presenting with suicidal thoughts.

Since getting some help with his own depression, Read set up Facebook page Suicide Awareness / Prevention to support others in the same situation, but he hoped the page would eventually be managed by professionals.

‘‘I realised there was this hole when people were reaching out for help they were not getting it.’’

Danyon Fairbrother, 23, spoke about how he was sent home from ED after trying to take his own life when he was 16. But more recently, a rehabilitation programme in Blenheim had helped him address past demons.

Fairbrother’s Facebook group, Unity Within The Community, seeks to raise awareness about mental health and to end stigma.

Canterbury Charity Hospital founder Phil Bagshaw said that since opening 10 years ago, the charity had treated 13,000 patients who had been refused treatment by the Canterbury District Health Board.

Instead of funding health appropriately, the Government had created systems to ‘‘manage the trajectory of demand’’ while not adequately recording those who were denied treatment, he said.

A study he led on unmet health need found 9.3 per cent of those surveyed were not getting the hospital level services they needed.

‘‘That would represent approximately 300,000 people currently sitting out there who have been told they need some sort of secondary care and they can’t get it,’’ Bagshaw said.