Churchill Hospital delivers for Marlborough patients

A Marl­bor­ough woman says it’s “so won­der­ful” to have a new knee after she was plucked from the pub­lic wait list for private sur­gery after seven months of wait­ing.

Kraisri Handy was one of 375 people on the pub­lic wait list who were booked into Blen­heim’s private Churchill Hos­pital by Health New Zea­l­and dur­ing the past year. The Gov­ern­ment dir­ec­ted Health NZ to send pub­lic patients to private hos­pit­als as part of a crack­down on bal­loon­ing wait lists.

Fig­ures released under the Offi­cial Inform­a­tion Act show trans­fers to Churchill Hos­pital had surged in recent years, from 27 patients in 2023 to 94 in 2024, and 375 in 2025. The 2025 trans­fers cost Health NZ $1.2 mil­lion, up from $315,000 in 2023.

Handy, ori­gin­ally from Thai­l­and, moved to Blen­heim 30 years ago. She injured both knees in 2016 when she was thrown from the back of a trailer dur­ing grape har­vest.

Des­pite swell­ing and severe pain, her doc­tor twice mis­dia­gnosed the issue and sent her away with paink­illers. She battled through 10 years of knee prob­lems, tak­ing med­ic­a­tion to keep work­ing.

In early 2025, she reached her limit. “I said ‘I can’t handle it any more, it hurts, I can’t sleep’,” the 63-year-old said. “It gets quite pain­ful, to the point where I can’t bend my knees.”

A new doc­tor sent her for X-rays, which revealed severe arth­ritis, dis­placed bones, and no remain­ing car­til­age. In June last year, a spe­cial­ist put her on the wait list for sur­gery on her left knee, with the right knee to fol­low sep­ar­ately. Seven months passed. “They just say ‘just wait’, no-one tells me any­thing,” she said. “I under­stand, because when I’m there, I can see how busy they are.”

In Janu­ary, Churchill Private Hos­pital Trust called her to arrange sur­gery for the fol­low­ing week. “I don’t ques­tion it at all, I’m just happy,” she said.

The sur­gery went smoothly and she was back on her feet that even­ing. “I feel brand new, so good, so won­der­ful.” She is now back on the wait­ing list for her right knee.

The pub­lic wait list pri­or­it­ised more ser­i­ous cases, mean­ing patients such as Handy were often repeatedly bumped down. Health NZ selec­ted Handy for trans­fer because she was among the longest-wait­ing patients need­ing a straight­for­ward pro­ced­ure.

The national pub­lic health pro­vider pays private facil­it­ies to cover com­plete patient care, includ­ing pre-oper­at­ive and post-oper­at­ive con­sulta­tions.

Of the 375 patients trans­ferred to Churchill Hos­pital last year, 183 under­went lens inser­tions and catar­act pro­ced­ures, 81 had knee replace­ments, and 57 had hip replace­ments. The remainder had pro­ced­ures for the mus­cu­lo­skeletal sys­tem, gall­blad­der, carpal tun­nel and her­nias.

Health NZ’s Nel­son Marl­bor­ough interim chief med­ical officer Derek Sher­wood – who is a prac­tising oph­thal­mo­lo­gist – said cases trans­ferred were usu­ally less com­plex and did not require intens­ive care beds.

“We’ve always used private hos­pit­als to try and do addi­tional sur­gery for dec­ades,” he said.

Under pre­vi­ous dis­trict health boards, short-term con­tracts tied to leftover year­end fund­ing cre­ated ad-hoc trans­fers.

Long-term con­tracts under Health NZ now allow bet­ter plan­ning and cer­tainty, Sher­wood said. He added that while send­ing patients private provides imme­di­ate relief for pan­demic back­logs, long-term res­ol­u­tion requires invest­ment in pub­lic cap­ital and bed capa­city.

Churchill Hos­pital gen­eral man­ager Belinda Watkins con­firmed the hos­pital signed an agree­ment in Novem­ber 2024 fol­low­ing min­is­terial dir­ec­tion to out­source elect­ive sur­ger­ies.

She noted the hos­pital was man­aging the work­load well and seek­ing a com­mit­ment con­tract for stable long-term patient volumes.

Published in Weekend Express, Saturday 8 August 2026