{"id":13735,"date":"2025-05-27T05:55:36","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T17:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=13735"},"modified":"2025-05-27T05:55:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T17:55:36","slug":"heart-patients-worse-off-in-northland-than-auckland-specialist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=13735","title":{"rendered":"Heart patients worse off in Northland than Auckland &#8211; specialist"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li>Northland heart patients and doctors say it is harder to get specialist care there.<\/li>\n<li>Health NZ says there&#8217;s no difference in &#8220;threshold&#8221; for care between Northland and Auckland.<\/li>\n<li>Recruitment is underway for a sixth specialist.<\/li>\n<li>The Heart Foundation says there&#8217;s a lack of specialist services in some regions, leading to worse outcomes for patients.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Heart patients in Northland have to be much sicker to even get a specialist appointment than if they lived in Auckland, which is where they get referred for surgery if they need it.<\/p>\n<p>That claim (by the region&#8217;s cardiologists) appears to be backed up by Health NZ data, which shows huge variations in wait times between regions.<\/p>\n<p>Hokianga farmer Tokowhati Piripi lives with a ticking time bomb in his chest &#8211; an aortic aneurysm (a bulge in the wall of the main artery going to his heart), high blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat.<\/p>\n<p>The 69-year-old was waitlisted for surgery in November as &#8220;routine priority&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I started to run out of wind going up hills about two-and-a-half years ago. It&#8217;s alright, as long as I don&#8217;t try to walk up hills or do things,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>His wife, Teina, said they have been told the current wait time for non-urgent operations is about nine months &#8211; &#8220;up to three times longer than it should be&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re really worried that he could just cark it. He won&#8217;t be able to see his mokopuna.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The aneurysm could rupture at any time and then he will need emergency surgery in Auckland, probably transported by helicopter &#8211; as long as there is one available at the time.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s the other way you get in front of the surgeon too,&#8221; Teina Piripi said bleakly.<\/p>\n<p>She knows her husband faces &#8220;a triple whammy of health inequities&#8221;: he is M\u0101ori, male and he lives in a rural area.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our acute services, the care you get here, is not the same.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He has a higher risk of actually dying than if he keeled over in Auckland.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to Health NZ data, seen by RNZ, 116 Northland patients (just under 17 percent) were waiting more than the target three months for a first specialist appointment in March.<\/p>\n<p>In Auckland, 120 patients &#8211; or about one in 10 &#8211; had waited too long.<\/p>\n<div class=\"photo-captioned photo-captioned-full photo-cntr eight_col \"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.rnztools.nz\/rnz\/image\/upload\/s--ItT93Aiw--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1644282906\/4MRSE4F_copyright_image_233475?_a=BACCd2AD\" alt=\"Elderly man holding hands on chest suffering from heart attack, closeup\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\"><span class=\"caption\">About 17 percent of Northland patients are waiting more than three months for a first specialist appointment.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Photo:\u00a0123RF<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In Auckland, 120 patients &#8211; or about one in 10 &#8211; had waited too long.<\/p>\n<p>Northland&#8217;s head of cardiology service, Marcus Lee, said by the time he sees patients, they are sicker than they would be if they lived in Auckland.<\/p>\n<p>The first barrier to get a specialist appointment was getting a referral from a GP, and some Northland people struggle to get a GP.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Secondly, the barriers to get a specialist review is much higher because we don&#8217;t have the resources, the thresholds are much higher.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And if we see someone who doesn&#8217;t meet the threshold, we are depriving someone else of care.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So it&#8217;s just this constant juggling of who you can see within the right time frame.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Auckland City had more than 20 cardiologists for a population of half a million, while Northland has just five to serve 200,000 people, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Health NZ was recruiting for another cardiologist for Northland, but he estimated they really needed eight or 10 specialists to get the same access as in Auckland.<\/p>\n<p>His team has worked hard to clear the backlog of patients waiting for first appointments &#8211; but that meant pushing back some patients with &#8220;known severe cardiac disease&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So you live with that right &#8211; sometimes you think &#8216;Have I made the right call?&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And it&#8217;s quite hard because you know GPs are under significant pressure, and they&#8217;re working long hours too.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Northland has no after-hours or weekend cardiology service, so general physicians pick up those patients.<\/p>\n<div class=\"photo-captioned photo-captioned-full photo-cntr eight_col \"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.rnztools.nz\/rnz\/image\/upload\/s--prRAoaXr--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1644796659\/4LWFKLK_copyright_image_286473?_a=BACCd2AD\" alt=\"AUCKLAND - FEB 20 2016:Auckland City Hospital at night.\" width=\"1050\" height=\"656\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\"><span class=\"caption\">Health NZ says patients and their wh\u0101nau are supported to travel to Auckland for specialist care.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Photo:\u00a0123rf.com<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Anne Wetere, 62, is also waiting for a heart procedure.<\/p>\n<p>Three years ago, she collapsed at work the day after completing a half marathon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I said to them, &#8216;I think i&#8217;m just dehydrated and I&#8217;ll be fine&#8217;. But then five weeks later, I went into ED and they picked it up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She has had to go to Whang\u0101rei Hospital&#8217;s emergency department 14 times with atrial fibrillation, when her heart suddenly starts racing at over 160 beats a minute.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wait and if it doesn&#8217;t go back to normal, I have to go in.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When I have an attack, it takes a whole day [to recover] and I have to take time off work as well, because I still work full-time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She had a specialist appointment last August and was put on the waiting list to be assessed by a surgeon, which finally happened in March.<\/p>\n<p>However, she has been told it could be eight to 10 months before she gets the procedure to fix it: cardiac ablation.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, she has had to give up competitive waka ama and other activities.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I just worry I might go into atrial fibrillation while I&#8217;m out on the water or away on trips.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Northland heart patients and doctors say it is harder to get specialist care there. Health NZ says there&#8217;s no difference in &#8220;threshold&#8221; for care between Northland and Auckland. Recruitment is underway for a sixth specialist. The Heart Foundation says there&#8217;s a lack of specialist services in some regions, leading to worse outcomes for patients. Heart [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13737,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13735\/revisions\/13737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}