Planned health reforms may not last, experts warn

Political factors “continue to frustrate” attempts to reform New Zealand’s health system and improve equality

Healthcare reform in New Zealand may be doomed unless it takes into account the politics of the country’s health system, an editorial in The New Zealand Medical Journal has said.

A review released last year recommended sweeping reform of health service provision, but “until these exercises explicitly consider the political factors that continue to frustrate each attempt at reform, they will neither change the political calculus that drives the decisions nor the status quo,” the paper by Murray Horn and Des Gorman says.