Health New Zealand is refusing to reveal how much it is paying private hospitals to perform elective surgeries under a new national contract – a move critics say makes it impossible to know if taxpayers are getting value for money.<\/p>\n
General surgeon and Canterbury Charity Hospital Trust chair Phil Bagshaw said the public deserved answers.<\/p>\n
“We taxpayers are paying, so we should know whether we’re getting value for money.”<\/p>\n
The new contract comes as the government’s ‘Elective Boost’ programme has outsourced thousands of procedures to private hospitals since March, with a further 21,000 expected between July 2025 and June 2026.<\/p>\n
The new contract was released under the Official Information Act, but the prices agreed with private hospitals were withheld. Health NZ said publishing them would “create a commercial disadvantage to providers”.<\/p>\n
Former health minister and Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said the lack of transparency was unacceptable.<\/p>\n
“We need to know how much the procedures in private hospitals cost so that the public can have an informed debate on where these operations should happen.”<\/p>\n
She pointed out that the Ministry of Health published data on the cost of nearly every procedure carried out in public hospitals and noted overseas research showed outsourcing was generally more expensive.<\/p>\n
“I do question the use of commercial sensitivity to withhold this information from the public. In many instances in a region there’d only be one private hospital that’s being contracted with, so there’s no competitor that stands to gain from knowing that hospital’s pricing. This information should all be out in public.”<\/p>\n
Acting Health Minister Matt Doocey did not say whether he believed the information should be made public, but said: “Thousands more New Zealanders have been able to get the surgery they need thanks to this government’s Elective Boost.”<\/p>\n
“Kiwis rightly expect faster access to surgery, and that is exactly what we’re delivering. I expect Health NZ to continue working with private providers to ensure we get both value for money for taxpayers and faster treatment for patients waiting in pain.”<\/p>\n
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Health New Zealand is refusing to reveal how much it is paying private hospitals to perform elective surgeries under a new national contract – a move critics say makes it impossible to know if taxpayers are getting value for money. General surgeon and Canterbury Charity Hospital Trust chair Phil Bagshaw said the public deserved answers. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14799","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\/14799","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=14799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14801,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14799\/revisions\/14801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}