Rising Temperatures
At the risk of sounding whingey lately, I’m trying to refrain from acting like I’m barking up the wrong tree. But alas, my blood pressure rises significantly every time I approach this subject. What do you do when a system responsible for taking care of the sick is showing all the signs of a little terminal illness itself?
I know what they’d do on a farm! They’d put it out of it’s misery and or shoot it. And with all due respect to people with softer constitutions, it’s the most humane thing to do when a proper judgment of a situation arises in a farm context. But this is not a farm context and there are laws against shooting people. So, I’m going to settle for a little semantic shot in the arm rather than a life-depriving real time head-shot.
I love the Bay, but it’d be fair to say the Public Health Services here need a definite shot in the arm. I don’t use them myself but I am aware of how their workings have affected more than two handfuls of people I know personally.
The catch cry of the Hastings District Health Unit is “as a respected organisation ‘responsive’ to the health needs of people in Hawke’s Bay and the Chatham Islands; and to continue to enhance the systems and culture that optimise the patient journey.” Fair enough, I suppose you’ve got to have a reason for being. No-one else is going talk you up!
Well, as most people here in the Bay know, in February 2008, there was a Regional incident that boiled over onto the national news headlines as former Health Minister David Cunliffe sacked the entire District Health Board. A lot was said by a lot of people.
Former Local Labour list MP Russell Fairbrother said that he didn’t believe there was strong region-wide public feeling against the sacking of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board. Personally I thought that was one of the more sensible expressions recorded publicly and made by a pollie. At the time he said, “those who are unhappy are people who can afford Private Healthcare while those who are stuck with Public Service are happy the Board has gone.” It was a valid comment. However, the Board was reinstated.
Briefly and in a somewhat simplistic wrap up of what transpired, “the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigated a former Hawke’s Bay District Health Board member against whom complaints were made for criminal wrong-doing relating to the Board’s awarding of Health Contracts.
Two of the Board member’s former colleagues had complained to Police, citing an abuse of the District Health Board’s contracting process. A complaint was made against their former colleague because of his other role as the Managing Director of a Community-based Health
& Disability Support Provider. They believed his was a conflict of interest and the ensuing row eventually tore the Board apart and led to its sacking by Health Minister David Cunliffe.
The ins and outs of a case like that should have called for a more measured and cautious approach but that’s not how it happened. The test they say, was always going to be whether “a member’s or official’s duties or responsibilities to a public entity could be affected by some other interest or duty that the member or official may have.” The bottom-line then, if they did, was to ask the question, what is the best way to manage those conflicts of interest?
Controller and Auditor-General K.B. Brady shines a torch along a pathway that is oftentimes fraught with danger. Dark as it is wide. He wisely suggested, “Managing conflicts of interest need not mean that a District Health Board can’t have members or officials who have experience, knowledge, connections, or contacts with other organisations, or who have other commercial relationships with their DHB BUT DHB members need to recognise that sometimes there may be particular matters in which it is UNWISE for them to participate, or where their involvement needs to be limited.”
Ask all those people I know personally requiring: hip, hernia, knee, hand, back and throat operations, some who’ve been left hanging about on health lines spanning anything from 2 to 5yrs, what they think of the bun fight and they shake their heads. Do they care about the legalese? No, they just want a quality of life that is currently better than the one they have now. So, in the meantime my question is, the people … what about the people? It’s a question of focus isn’t it! Focus on a solution.
