June 22, 2023
Wait list tool based on evidence
The Health Ministry’s senior Māori official says Te Whatu Ora’s new Equity Adjustor Score is a good example of evidence-based policy.
The tool, which is used to determine which patients should get surgery first, has come under fire from National and ACT because one of its five criteria is ethnicity.
Health Deputy Director General Maori John Whaanga says the evidence is overwhelming that Maori get ill earlier and die earlier, and that the health system needs to do a better job.
“My role is not to get involved in the politics but to draw on the evidence and the evidence is clear. We have to do fundamentally a better job for Maori and when you look at the things the equity adjuster looks at – clinical priorities so it’s not that clinical considerations aren’t taken into (account); time spent on the waitlist; geographical location; ethnicity; and deprivation – evidence clearly shows they are things that do impact on health and we should be looking at them,” he says.
Mr Whaanga says equity can mean treating people differently, because people start at different places.