A Budget for the status quo Lyndon Keene | Health Policy Analyst
Before this year’s Budget was announced, ASMS estimated that well over $2 billion of additional health funding would be needed for the coming year just to maintain current service levels and pay for new initiatives.
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The additional funding is needed to cover costs such as inflation, wage growth, pay equity agreements, demographic changes, lockdown service backlogs, new initiatives and addressing base funding shortfalls indicated by a decade of DHB deficits.
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across-the-board staff shortages
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lack of general hospital beds
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more than 40% of adults have an unmet need for dental care due to cost
In addition, there are long-standing issues to be addressed, including:
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poor access to publicly funded medicines when matched with comparable countries
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an estimated 450,000 people with unmet need for hospital treatment
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poor cancer survival rates when matched with comparable countries
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a further lockdown backlog of patients needing treatment
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high levels of potentially avoidable hospitalisation rates
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an estimated 1.2 million adults with one or more types of unmet need for primary care
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dilapidated hospital buildings and equipment.
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health inequity, with significant gaps in life expectancy and other key health status indicators, by ethnicity and deprivation level
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overwhelmed specialist mental health and addiction services
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overwhelmed emergency departments
THE SPECIALIST | JUNE 2022
New funding On Budget Day, Vote Health received $1.8 billion of additional funding for 2022/23, but more is to be added to cover the costs of pay equity agreements as they were approved by Cabinet during the course of the year. Broadly speaking, aside from a few areas targeted for new funding, this looks like a status quo budget.
