In October, then crown monitor Dr Andrew Connolly was appointed to chair an Endoscopy User Group to implement recommendations to improve the board s colonoscopy services. In the same meeting, he told the board: “Category C shouldn’t exist. I’m not simply going to referee a group of people arguing about whether a patient is category A, B, or C.” On Monday, Connolly, who is now the chief medical officer for the Ministry of Health and a clinical advisor to the Southern DHB, said removing the category was simply a matter of bureaucracy. There had been a blanket ban on putting patients with symptoms on the category C waiting list since October, he said, but some patients had ended up on the list after a “scrap” over waiting list definitions, he said.