frankv:

 

Perhaps the rollout of the National Bowel Screening Program (Oct 2020-2022 in MidCentral, but varying around the country) may have overloaded the resources in your DHB by increasing the number of specialist outpatient appointments and endoscopies, and consequently increasing lead times for less urgent cases. Generally speaking, the same specialists work for the DHB as well as in private practice. It's possible, depending on where the bottleneck is (specialist time, endoscope availability), but I think it's unlikely that going private will speed things up.

 

Try calling the National Bowel Screening Program. I believe they have an 0800 number. Ask them to send you a test kit. A positive result would likely push you up the priorities, and perhaps there's an allocation of resources for NBSP cases.

 

Thanks for this info.