Health Minister off to a Promising Start

Health Minister off to a Promising Start

“The new Minister of Health is off to a promising start by signalling his willingness to listen to senior doctors and others working on the clinical front line of health care,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

He says the ASMS is encouraged by the early decisions and signals coming from Dr Jonathan Coleman as he meets with district health board (DHB) chief executives and senior clinical staff around the country.

“His decision to wind down Health Benefits Limited (HBL) caught many by surprise but was an excellent move and showed his willingness to respond to the concerns raised by senior clinical leaders and health managers,” says Mr Powell.

“HBL has been a destabilising force in DHBs for too long and should have been taken in hand much earlier. The fact Dr Coleman has done this so soon after assuming the health portfolio from his predecessor, Tony Ryall, sends a powerful message to the health sector that he is not walking in anyone’s shadow.”

He says Dr Coleman was also emphatic about the importance of good clinical engagement in DHBs when he addressed senior doctors and dentists at the ASMS Annual Conference in Wellington at the end of November. He linked clinical engagement with morale and efficiency within DHBs, as well as the quality of health care provided, and said he had given DHB chairs and chief executives the message that they needed to foster and support clinical-led decision-making.

Mr Powell says the Minister has also responded positively to ASMS concerns about the possibility of the Wellington and Hutt Valley public hospital laboratories being privatised, telling doctors at the ASMS Annual Conference that he was following the issue closely, had talked to the chair of both Capital & Coast and Hutt Valley DHBs advising her that he did not want to do anything that would result in a poorer service to patients. He linked this to the importance he attached to taking seriously the advice of senior doctors not to put public hospital services at risk by privatising the laboratories.

“He was quite clear that he was not interested in getting into what he termed ‘firefights’ that would distract from the task of providing health care,” says Mr Powell. “That was heartening for public hospital specialists to hear.”

Since then, the Minister has also signalled his support of a letter from Hutt Valley hospital specialists to scrap a crucial strand of plans to merge by stealth the three Capital & Coast, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa DHBs. The plan to create a hybrid organisation with a single chief executive for all three DHBs has, at the urging of hospital specialists, now been discontinued. This wise decision has the Minister’s imprint on it. (http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/64034282/Merger-moves-a-flop-doctors).

“Dr Coleman’s message at our Annual Conference to the three lower North Island DHBs could not have been clearer – listen to the advice of your senior doctors and don’t risk disruption and instability by privatising. Hopefully these DHB health bosses will follow his sensible advice.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media