17441 (2025). Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall to the Minister of Health

17441 (2025). Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall to the Minister of Health: How many, if any, of the 10,579 additional procedures announced on 7 March 2025 are going to be outsourced to providers based outside of the patient’s home region?

Hon Simeon Brown: Health New Zealand's Elective Boost will see more than 10,000 additional procedures outsourced between now and the middle of the year, including cataracts, hip replacements, ear procedures, tonsillectomies, knee replacements, and hernia repairs. This is part of our Government's focus on putting patients first by ensuring that patients can get their surgery as quicky as possible. I am advised that the location of the outsourced provider is at the discretion of an individual patient and managed at a district level on a case-by-case basis. This information, as requested by the Member, is not collated nationally by Health New Zealand and I do not consider it to be in the public interest to divert staff from essential services to undertake a substantial collation exercise.