New Zealanders who need surgery are ranked by their pain and assigned a number - they only make it on to the waiting list if their number is high enough to meet five different thresholds.
These thresholds are getting further out of reach every year, despite the Government pushing more money into elective surgery, clinicians and experts say.
This is because the demand for healthcare is limitless and the ability to pay for it is not. The gap between the patients who meet the clinical threshold for surgery, but fall short of hospitals' financial threshold is widening, New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA) chairman Dr Mark Peterson says. [Source] [BJS]
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