Don’t cut the new NHB Board off at the knees

News Release
New Zealand Society of Physiotherapists
29 October 2009
Don’t cut the new NHB Board off at the knees

The Minister of Health is in danger of dooming his new National Health Board Advisory Board to failure before it even starts, physiotherapists warn.

“The Minister says he intends the Board to reflect the public health service, so it will include senior doctors and nurses,” said Martin Chadwick, Vice President of the New Zealand Society of Physiotherapists. “He’s forgetting something vital. What would the public health service be without its physios, OTs, radiologists, and all the other allied health professionals? Yes, the operations would be performed and the patients nursed – but who would rehabilitate the patients, prepare them for discharge, help them back into everyday life?”

Teamwork is essential in public health, Mr Chadwick pointed out. “Physios and other allied health professionals are an essential part of any multidisciplinary team centred around the patient in a hospital or the community. Therefore it would be a fatal mistake to leave out their perspective in a national planning team like this new NHB Advisory Board.”

Mr Chadwick said that allied health professional organisations would be happy to nominate one senior clinician for the Minister to consider for membership of the NHB Advisory Board. He was commenting after the Minister’s announcement about the appointment of a chair for the new board.

“Physios and other allied health professionals have so much to contribute to the Minister’s ‘better, sooner, more convenient’ health care,” Mr Chadwick said. “For the Minister to achieve the goals of the Horn Report, allied health must be an integral part of all health planning and service delivery.”

ENDS

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