PMH Medical Records To Fight Review

“Medical Records staff at Primcess Margaret Hospital fear they are involved in a review that will end up with similar job losses as in the Clinical Records Department (CRD) of Christchurch Hospital,” said Martin Cooney, Organiser of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) today.

“The CDHB is currently making twelve CRD staff redundant from February 2005 and is paying large sums of money to contractors to do reviews of Telephonists and Trade and Maintenance staff across the CDHB as well as these PMH Medical Records staff”, said Martin Cooney. “Basically any staff considered in a support role are being reviewed with a view to making savings.”

“Our Union discovered with one day’s notice that an external reviewer was to come from Palmerston North on Wednesday 13th and Thursday 14th to look at PMH Medical Records jobs and make recommendations about how they could ‘improve their jobs’,” said Martin Cooney. “Staff have had promises made that the Review is not about cutting staff numbers. However the same promises were made to staff at the CRD and then broken. Trust is at an all time low.”

“Staff are aware that the CDHB has lost funding unfairly from the introduction of Population Based Funding,” said Martin Cooney. “Now support staff are seeing big pay rises for Doctors and Nurses and believe their jobs are disappearing to pay for these. This is subverting the team approach necessary in a Hospital.”

“Support staff are a critical part of the medical team,” said Martin Cooney. “Cuts to Medical Records staff will result in clinical teams not getting the correct information on time to make the clinical decisions necessary for treatment.”

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