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National to keep Te Whatu Ora, tele abortion service if elected

November 6, 2022

National’s health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti joins Q+A for a discussion about what National would do with the health reforms

National has no plans to scrap Te Whatu Ora Health NZ if it's elected to power next year.

The restructuring of the country's DHBs in July to form the new centralised health entity drew criticism from the opposition, but health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti says National will stick with it should they get back into government.

"When we land, we will stay with it because the sector has said 'don't do major structure change'."

However, he asserts National will bring a different approach.

"We will certainly be more outcome-focused than what it's projecting at the moment."

"I think they're struggling, which is a bit of a challenge when you think that they were announced 2 years ago."

"Tens of millions of Ernst Young Consulting fees.

"And yet the interim plan that came out a week ago said, Look, we're not going to be able to fully deploy the health reforms for another two years. How can that be?

The Māori Health Authority will be on the chopping block, Reti said.

"I will disestablish the Māori Health Authority for several reasons.

"First of all, an entity that in its establishment. Says that there will be no benefits in the first five years... I struggle with that."

He said there's also "a significant conflict of interest for the Māori Health Authority."

"It's a commissioner of service. Okay, so it purchases services, but at the same time, it's a monitor of Māori health inequities.

"[So] it will be monitoring itself, it will be marking its own exam."

National's solution to Māori health inequities, Reti said, is to set an effective Māori health strategy within the existing health system.

"What we'll do is we'll have a Māori health directorate inside the Ministry of Health," Reti said.

"If we look back to when that was last effective, that was in Tariana Turia's hands."

Another initiative National plans to keep is the Government's new telehealth service which will make abortion healthcare more widely accessible.

The service, Decide, was rolled out at the start of this month to provide phone consultations and referrals for pre-abortion tests and sends out medication to women in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

Reti told Q+A that Decide won't go anywhere under a National government.

"We have said that we will not change our abortion settings, and we believe in increasing access to health for New Zealanders."

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