Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

As my son marched off for a lung X-ray for a chest infection yesterday, I wondered just how dire the health system was going to get this winter.  As the weather starts to cool, many are picking up change-of-season coughs and colds and when I look at what happened in post-Covid winters overseas, I worry about how bad it might get here too.  Health NZ says it’s ‘bracing’ for a tough winter. But it’s not just sickness that may come our way which is worrying, but our ability to cope with it. There is the state of our hospitals, the workforce of frontline health workers, the shortage of nurses, the overworked doctors and the lack of GP’s in many regions. It was reported that Health NZ’s Chair Rob Campbell was warning that ‘the reformed health system was still grappling with ‘systemic problems’ that would affect the level of service it could give in the colder months.’ Systemic problems. Why are they not being identified immediately and the troubleshooting to fix it underway?  Remember the waiting time debacle last