08-01-2024, 10:18 AM
(08-01-2024, 09:27 AM)SueDonim Wrote: From the DHB years we had 22x the management of all functions, inclusing all the non-clinical roles. 22 IT departments. 22 Finance departments. Etc. All doing the same thing. Within that there were initiatives to try and get collective buying to save purchase prices and streamline procedures. Etc. But that couldn't work because product and system vendors were selling 22x whatever the base product was and wouldn't budge on price. Even though NZ's whole health sector is only about the size of a medium-sized hospital in the US. So the merging into a single entry was by far the best thing to do. I just hope that it is/has been done sensibly as some tasks need the same number of overall staff, but with less management. The discipline that I worked in directly saved clinical staff from having to do non-clinical background and needed to grow overall, not reduce.
Duplicating the new structure to include an additional Maori health stream was expensive nonsense. People are people and racial and cultural aspects need to be part of the bigger picture, not held aside.
The proposed tax cuts might just help the overworked and underpaid staff, both clinical and non-clinical, get a few more $ in the hand, but not by a lot. The minimum wage still puts people in the second tax bracket and people on an average salary are still high in the third bracket. Only the consultants and a few of highest level managers are likely to see a significant increase in real income. Hopefully it's enough to keep a few more of them in NZ but I fear many professionals at all levels will still head offshore unless the actual work environment improves greatly in the new structure. Fingers crossed.
Succesive govts have managed to add managers to our health system, which hasn't helped. What's more likely to help is increased numbers of properly trained frontline staff but of course that can't happen overnight.
Maori & Pacific people have been at the bottom of the heap when it comes to health;the changes were intended to remedy that. Naturally a right wing govt sees no merit in that & has removed it with unseemly speed.
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)