Dr Anna Rolleston The Cardiac Clinic

I write a health column. My aim is to help Tauranga and New Zealand to become a healthier and happier population.

Today, however, my health column is going to touch on economics in an effort to get the attention of some of you I wish to effect change in.

Are you concerned about your ability to earn well into the future or how New Zealand is going to maintain and sustain a viable economy? I am no economist and certainly know very little about ‘the state of the nation', but I know health.

I know it costs this country to look after people who have diseases and disorders. I know that our economy cannot afford to keep the current model through which we manage health and healthcare. It is not sustainable into the future. We cannot keep funding illness and post episode interventions.

We must start funding prevention – I believe health care will become more and more the responsibility of the individual.

There are many business people out there who have or are heading for heart disease or may already have had a heart attack. It is always interesting for me when talking to the business community about heart disease because everyone has a story about ‘so-and-so' who 'just had a heart attack” or 'just had bypass surgery” or 'just had three stents put in at Waikato Hospital”.

I get the feeling it is quite normal to have heart disease and or know someone who's had a heart attack. What gets me up on my soap box though is this…heart disease, surgeries to intervene against heart disease and the medications that are prescribed to people with the condition, cost this country tens of millions of dollars every year. This is part of the unsustainability of the current health funding approach. We cannot continue to fund illness.

We need to fund lifestyle and education programmes – nutrition and activity – that prevent these things from happening in the first place.

It cannot be argued that we will be able to fund health like we currently are, with our ageing population that is set to increase significantly during the next 40 years. Something has got to give – and it's likely to be people's overworked hearts and the taxpayers' pocket.

It costs on average $25,000 for a coronary artery bypass surgery in this country. Up to 1000 people have bypass surgery every year and that number is not looking like changing anytime soon. Coronary angioplasty is the other big heart intervention surgery at an average cost of $10,000 each – received by approximately 14,000 people a year.

Are you a business person in your 40s or older, concerned about your economic future – your ability to earn a living – and concerned about New Zealand's future economic position? Get your heart checked and become, in a small way, part of the solution. Even if you think you are fit and healthy and lead a fairly good lifestyle, if you are in business and under a certain amount of stress, than you are a prime candidate for heart disease.

It costs significantly less to fund preventative measures against heart disease and heart attacks than to fund a person once they have it. Preventative medicine is the way of the future.

We must fund wellness not illness. As with a good business, we must be proactive, not reactive.