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Nurse leaders see Budget 2015 as short-sighted, leaving health short-changed and lacking in vision.

Memo Musa, the chief executive of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, said the Budget increase still left health short-changed by around $260 Million to meet the costs of rising prices, the increasing and ageing population, wage increases and new services.

NZNO members are currently voting on a pay offer from District Health Boards. Musa said the Budget funding for DHBs was $121 million short which would make it "tougher for DHBs' and would likely to have flow on impacts on safe staffing, quality of care and patient staffing.

He also said it was disappointed to see funding 'cut considerably' for mobile surgical services, telehealth services, inpatient hospice services, sexual health services, oral health and problem gambling. 

Professor Jenny Carryer, executive director of the College of Nurses Aotearoa, said allocating the majority of new Vote Health money to cover cost pressures rather than preventative health care was 'short-sighted' and 'propping up' the status quo.

"We're still largely an 'ambulance at the bottom of the cliff' model although we have talked for 30 years about needing to save people at the top of the cliff." (See May 21 Budget Newsfeed story for Budget spending details)

Kim Cameron, acting chair of the College of Primary Health Care Nurses NZNO, also noted that the "record amount" allocated to health was mostly to cover cost pressures and it did "not address the health issues core to our families, whānau and communities'.

She also expressed concern that the budget "seriously undercut" funding for health workforce training including nurses.  This was echoed by Musa who said the funding had gone down at the same time that demand for highly trained health care workers had never been higher. 

Carryer was also disappointed by the reduced training budget with nursing leaders hoping for new funding to be released for a proposed nurse practitioner training programme. 

BOWEL CANCER PILOT EXTENSION

Investing $12.3 million in extending the Waitemata DHB bowel cancer screening pilot rather than investing the money in the next step to a national bowel screening programme has puzzled nurse leaders.

The decision was slammed by NZNO professional nursing advisor Angela Clark who said extending the pilot demonstrated that government was "not fully committed to the long term health solutions for all of New Zealand".

“When more than 1200 people in our country die from the disease each year our nurses tell us enough is enough!!

Carryer asked what was to be learnt by extending the successful pilot which had already shown we need a national  screening programme.

She argued the money would be better spent in investing in training the expanded colonoscopist workforce required to rollout a national screening programme.

CHILD POVERTY

Extra funding for beneficiaries with children "absolutely delighted" Carryer though she added that the $25 a week was "just a drop in the ocean".

"And I'm not sure the requirement to work when the youngest child turns three is particularly feasible or desirable," she said.  "I think it's a pretty mean arrangement that is more likely to put children under stress and reduce essential parenting capacity further."

Musa said the initiatives aimed at supporting families at risk and at risk children were welcome but did not go far enough in tackling child poverty.

 Cameron said the government needed to directly address health and economic inequalities and poverty to have a major impact on both individual and population health.

DISABILITY

Musa said funding for disability support workers to travel between clients was 'good news'.  Also that funding had been budgeted for wage increases for support workers.  

But he added that this new spending, and funding for palliative care and the bowel screening pilot meant it was a "robbing Peter to pay Paul" budget with the net result being some New Zealanders missing out on essential health care.