Its ‘relational’ Rob Campbell, its relational

On Friday evening 19 May sacked Chair of Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora) Rob Campbell gave an address to an event in Auckland organised by New Zealand Women in Health with an attendance of around 90. He outlined his take on the problems of Aotearoa New Zealand’s health system and what is needed to

Showdown time over hospital laboratory privatisations; private tail wagging public dog?

Developments are coming to a head over those of Aotearoa New Zealand’s public hospital laboratories which were privatised under both Labour and National led governments. This was foreshadowed in my recent column published by BusinessDesk: How to fix the hospital laboratory fiasco. In the column I discussed the context in which several public hospital laboratories

Is a horrendous winter from hell coming?

On 9 February TVNZ’s 1News reported massive public hospital occupancy; 100% more than 600 times in 2022. At this level no person in their right mind could dispute the fact that Aotearoa New Zealand has a health system crisis even before this year’s winter is upon us: Hospitals hit 100% occupancy over 600 times last year.

Put patient-centred care at the core of health system

In January this year my political opposite Heather Roy and I jointly published a paper under the title Te Whatu Ora: Achieving Patient Centred Care and Wellbeing: Achieving Patient-Centred Care and Wellbeing. What is patient-centred care We explained what putting patient-centred care at the core of Aotearoa New Zealand’s health system in the following way: Our

Health New Zealand restructuring threatens health localities

Following his sacking as the Chair of Health New Zealand (HNZ – Te Whatu Ora), Rob Campbell threw a hand grenade into his former organisation by revealing that it was planning a full restructuring of “overhead roles” which would lead to hundreds of disestablished positions (redundancies). On 13 March BusinessDesk published my assessment of the

A slow moving train wreck: cancer specialist access in New Zealand

Access to oncologist treatment in Aotearoa New Zealand’s public hospitals received a harsh but necessary reminder yesterday (3 April) with to-the-point coverage by Radio New Zealand. It reported cancer support groups saying people are losing precious time, while they wait for treatment. The specific focus was on Dunedin Hospital which had to stop key services

Trust, relationships and health systems

Recently BusinessDesk published an article which really caught my eye. It was by Ian McCrae, founder and former Chief Executive of Orion Health, a major health software technology company. What struck me even more was a perceptive response from a medical specialist in social media. McCrae’s article is one of a series he has published

Reducing health inequity

My final article published by BusinessDesk in 2022 (20 December) discussed the challenge of Aotearoa New Zealand’s health system reducing health disparities in order to reduce inequity as now expressly required by legislation:  New health system can’t fix what’s broken in society. My focus was on the unrealistic expectations of the Pae Ora Act which

Health New Zealand turns to Star Wars and the Ancient Sith; what would Yoda say?

From time to time, when representing salaried medical specialists over many years, I would come across some real toe curling (back in the day I used the descriptor ‘toe cringing’ but ‘curling’ is the correct term). Synonyms for ‘toe-curling’ include embarrassing, humiliating, painful, awkward, unfortunate, shameful, undignified, ignominious and unseemly. These experiences were rare but memorable

When health ministers change

Since my involvement in the health system began in April 1989 with my appointment as Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS), I have witnessed four changes of government. This involvement continued from January 2020 when I morphed into a freelance writer, health commentator, and health systems and politics blogger. Macro changes