29 September 2009
Media Statement

Extra layer of bureaucracy won’t create efficiency

Establishing a new ‘super bureaucracy’ in the form of a National Health Board won’t do anything to enhance frontline services, and may actually achieve the opposite, says Labour Health spokesperson Ruth Dyson.

Ruth Dyson said that the responses the Government has received on the Horn Report it released last month shows that a number of organisations are concerned about another level of bureaucracy being imposed on health.

“It is revealing that Health Minister Tony Ryall refers to the responses as feedback rather than as submissions.

”If he called them submissions, he would have to acknowledge them at least in a token way. So instead he is simply referring to what health organisations are saying as feedback. That’s far less threatening to his ambitions, and underlines the fact he has already made up his mind about the future direction of health services.”

Ruth Dyson said if Mr Ryall wanted to achieve a greater sense of national leadership in terms of health priorities, he could have achieved that by reinforcing the role and importance of the Ministry of Health.

“A strong Ministry entrusted with promoting national priorities, combined with district health boards managing health needs within their own communities, is a far more compelling recipe for improving frontline services than simply adding an expensive layer of national bureaucracy on top of what already exists,” she said.

“The Horn Report’s strategy bears an uncanny resemblance to the failed Health Funding Authority model of the 1990s.

“That didn’t create better frontline health services, but the health sector still vividly recalls the HFA’s waste of valuable health dollars buying expensive chairs for its bureaucrats to sit in,” Ruth Dyson said.

“Tony Ryall seems intent on downplaying the impact of the Horn recommendations on the current health structure.

“Health restructuring proposed by the Horn Report risks increasing bureaucracy, time wastage, and generating paralysis in decision-making,” said Mr Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, today. Mr Powell was commenting specifically on the proposal to establish a new health powerful bureaucracy, the National Health Board, separate from the Ministry of Health.

"The Horn Report fails to adequately distinguish between functions and structures. The leadership functions recommended by the Horn Report are broadly commendable and supported. But it is not necessary to create another bureaucracy to achieve them. It would be much more effective to allow and empower the current Ministry of Health to do them. Furthermore, the proposed National Health Board would be less accountable than the Health Ministry. We want more accountability, not less.”

“The Horn Report significantly underestimates the impact its proposed health restructuring will have on the health sector. Most likely the preoccupation of the health system over the next year or two will be implementing and adapting the restructuring leading to paralysis in decision-making with no evidence that there will be improvements at the end of it.”

“The government should run with the good things in the Horn Report, including the national leadership functions, but not run with the major restructuring which would undermine their success” concluded Mr Powell.

ENDS

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