Equity of publicly-funded hip and knee joint replacement surgery in New Zealand: Results from a national observational study
Helen Harcombe, Gabrielle Davie, Sarah Derrett, Haxby Abbott, David Gwynne-Jones
The provision of publicly-funded hip and knee total joint replacement (TJR) procedures varies between District Health Boards (DHBs) and national rates have not increased since 2007, new University of Otago research has found. The Dunedin School of Medicine study, which appears in the latest edition of the New Zealand Medical Journal, examined rates of elective TJR procedures between 2006 and 2013. Study principal investigator Dr Helen Harcombe says that geographically-based inequities emerged from the research.Even taking into account age and ethnicity, rates of TJR procedures varied between DHBs, with DHBs covering larger populations tending to have lower rates than smaller ones Dr Harcombe says. The study also showed that while there has been an increase in the number of TJR procedures carried out in the public system between 2007 and 2013, rates are barely keeping pace with a growing population. The number of publicly-funded TJR procedures increased by six percent over this period, but New Zealands growing population meant the surgery rate per head of population (aged over 20 years) actually decreased by 0.6 percent.