Old hospital facilities keep patients waiting say doctors

Frustrated Palmerston North doctors have written to their district health board and the Health Minister complaining about a crisis involving old and substandard acute hospital facilities. Senior doctors told their MidCentral DHB bosses that facilities are so poor thousands of patients needing non-urgent surgery are being kept waiting. They also said there are long and increasing delays in the emergency department, and they themselves have lost faith in the DHB management to fix it. Their concerns are spelt out in a letter obtained by RNZ. RNZ's health correspondent Karen Brown has more.