By Rowan Quinn of RNZ

Hospitals have until the end of the month to book surgical slots for thousands of patients who have been waiting longer than a year.

It is one of a series of directives that gives a first glimpse of what the Planned Care Taskforce is doing behind the scenes to try to fix the huge number of people waiting for surgery.

Te Whatu Ora - Health NZ leaders sent a letter with a list of requests to all 20 of its health districts (formerly DHBs) last month.

It asked them to "actively tackle" long waiting lists by making sure the 7500 people who had been waiting longer than 12 months were given a booking by August 31.

They did not need to have had the operation by then, simply a plan for when they would get it.

The bookings were not to come at the expense of the most urgent surgeries, the letter said.

Te Whatu Ora also set a September 30 deadline for the districts to find a slot for the 4000 people who had been waiting more than a year to see a specialist.

Though those waiting the longest for planned care were often classed as needing the least urgent surgeries, many of them still struggled to lead normal lives - often living in pain, unable to work, exercise or even sleep properly.

Doctors spoken to by RNZ feared it might be difficult to fulfill the long-wait surgical bookings in practice, because there was already a big demand for higher priority cases.

The letter, from taskforce head Andrew Connolly, chief executive Margie Apa and hospital services director Dale Bramley, also told health districts to cut back on specialists' follow-up appointments with patients after surgery, to free up the specialists for those waiting to be seen for the first time.

Planned Care Taskforce head Andrew Connolly. Photo / Supplied

Some follow-ups could be done by non-medical people if they were trained to do that, or by telehealth, the letter said.

And it called on the different districts to work together to move patients between hospitals if one had capacity where another one did not.

In response to questions from RNZ, a Te Whatu Ora spokesperson said the directives were one part of a plan being developed to ensure people who had been told they would get treatment in the public hospital system would receive it.

It said those who needed urgent surgery would still get it and after that the priority would be for those who had waited the longest.

Planning was underway to increase the amount of care provided by general practitioners, nurses and allied health professionals and to look at the resources needed to do this, the spokesperson said.

The Planned Care Taskforce was announced in May to tackle the long waits for planned surgery.

They had been a problem before the pandemic but were exacerbated by lockdowns then by winter illnesses putting pressure on hospitals, forcing them to suspend a lot of planned care.