
Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp's death: 1 in 10 New Zealanders have kidney disease
Around one in 10 New Zealanders are believed to be living with the disease which Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp had when she died.
Among Māori and Pasifika, who are genetically predisposed to having kidney disease, the rate may be as high as one in five.

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12 hours ago
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Government Must Do More To Build Public Health System Capability
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1News
13 hours ago
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Introducing a national threshold for cataract treatment had led to about 1800 people added to the waiting list in the Southern District and about 900 more people put on the waiting list in Counties Manukau, the new report found. In orthopaedics, threshold "scores" for orthopaedic treatment range from 50 in Auckland and Canterbury to 80 in Wairarapa. ADVERTISEMENT "This means that a person's condition needs to be significantly worse in Wairarapa than Canterbury or Auckland to qualify for treatment." District-specific thresholds still in place were also "obscuring the extent of unmet need for treatment in some districts". "Significant work will be required to deal with the changes in demand that will result from the introduction of nationally consistent thresholds across all specialities." A doctor prescribing pharmacy to patient. (Source: Getty) Faster treatment not same as 'equitable' treatment The true level of unmet need was unknown, the report continued. "One possible measure of unmet need is the number of people who are assessed by a specialist but do not meet the threshold for treatment. ADVERTISEMENT "However, we also heard some clinicians will not refer a person for specialist assessment if they are considered unlikely to meet the treatment threshold. "Media reports during our audit suggested that specialities in some districts were not accepting referrals because they did not have the resources and would be unable to meet target time frames for assessing or treating people." Meeting the government's target for 95% of people receiving planned care treatment within four months by 2030 was going to require "significant improvement" the report said. "During our audit, the latest available reporting (for October to December 2024) showed that about 59% of planned care patients received treatment within four months of being placed on a waiting list. "The proportion of people receiving planned care treatment within four months has been in decline since 2017." However, the focus on improving wait times should go hand-in-hand with a focus on equitable access, the report urged. "Equity also needs to be a central consideration in Health NZ's work to improve timely provision of treatment. If this does not happen, there is a risk that strategies to improve timeliness could cause further inequities." ADVERTISEMENT Health was so interconnected, that too much focus in one area inevitably put pressure on the system elsewhere. For instance, the number of patients waiting longer than one year for treatment was cut from more than 4000 in October 2023, to 1916 by July 2024, although it rose again to 2630 by December 2024. However, in the same period, the waiting list for first specialist assessments nearly doubled, from 5000 to 9936, the auditors found. Outsourcing could 'exacerbate' inequities Health Minister Simeon Brown's push for more outsourcing to private providers needed to be carefully managed so it did not lead to greater inequities, the Auditor-General said. "Access to the private hospitals that provide outsourced treatment is not equally distributed across the country. This means that some districts can outsource patients more easily and at shorter notice than others. "In addition, not all patients can be outsourced for treatment. The people selected for outsourcing to private facilities are generally determined to be non-complex patients." ADVERTISEMENT Māori and Pacific peoples and people living in socially deprived areas were also more likely to have complications, which would bar them from treatment in a private hospital. "Health NZ needs to manage and monitor the outsourcing of treatment so that it does not compromise its focus on the treatment of patients in priority order or otherwise increase inequity in planned care." Auditor-General's recommendations for Health NZ Prepare a plan with a clear timeline for introducing nationally consistent thresholds for planned care treatment Put in place actions to improve equity of access to treatment and that efforts to improve timeliness do not increase inequities Strengthen its knowledge of equitable access to treatment by looking at unmet need and other information gaps Enable clear public reporting of how long people waiting for treatment, variations in access and how HNZ will improve equity of access.

RNZ News
14 hours ago
- RNZ News
Māori, Pasifika and disabled hardest hit by 'postcode lottery' healthcare
Photo: Unsplash / RNZ The chair of the College of Surgeons says legislation that pegs healthcare funding to population size means people in need are missing out. A new auditor-general report, Providing equitable access to planned care , showed elective services in the public system were often "not equitable or timely" , with people with the same level of clinical need qualifying for treatment in some districts, but not others. Ros Pochin told Morning Report the report outlined that the so-called 'postcode lottery' hit Māori, Pasifika and disabled patients the hardest. She said rural patients also suffered from inequitable care because smaller areas did not have the same access to specialities and staffing as metropolitan hospitals. "What we know is that a relatively higher percentage of vulnerable and underserved populations live in the rural regions but have a smaller portion of the pie to feed them with. "So, the capacities and the threshold by which you can treat people has to be made higher because you simply don't have the resources to treat all that you want to. "That means that you've got different thresholds around the country, which is clearly inequitable." Pochin said treatment should be based on clinical need, not resources, and argued greater investment was needed to resolve the imbalance in care. "We definitely support efforts to introduce nationally consistent thresholds - but thresholds alone won't solve the problem without funding and infrastructure to match that demand." She was also sceptical about the recent directive to outsource elective surgeries to private hospitals , claiming it would exacerbate current inequities. Pochin said private hospitals, which were generally based in cities, tended to take on low-complication work that skewed towards more "middle class and better off patients". "We know our rural communities have a greater number of people who are under-served. "[So], you're just increasing the number of people who are waiting, who are in those groups that are already not getting equitable care." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.