GUEST BLOG: Ian Powell – A very bureaucratic coup: Part Two thedailyblog.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thedailyblog.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
All DHB members were responsible to the health minister rather than their local community. Fees paid to chairs, deputy chairs and members varied according to the size of the DHB area and ranged from about $13,000 to $80,000 for chairs, and $6510 to more than $40,000 for members.
Supplied
Professor Robin Gauld, of the University of Otago’s Centre for Health Systems and Technology, says health board fees will be better spent on improving skills and expertise within the public health system rather than on consultants. The health minister decided how much each DHB member received based on a fees framework for board members of Crown entities.
STACY SQUIRES
Andrew Little last year approved $154 million of Government funding to add a new tower block with 64 more beds to Christchurch Hospital’s $525m acute services building, Waipapa. (Video first published November 2020).
Canterbury Charity Hospital founder Phil Bagshaw has welcomed the Government’s plan to overhaul the health system as “aspirationally correct” – but warns the Ministry of Health needs reforming too. Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) chairman Sir John Hansen and Māori health providers have welcomed the plan to replace DHBs with a central agency. Bagshaw, who was both an appointed and elected member of the CDHB from 2000 to 20004, said he thinks of the period as “the wasted years” in an undemocratic bureaucracy.
Up until the last election, National had the best grounding in communities around the country. It had the ability to mount a campaign based on the Government taking away your health board and relocating it into an ugly building filled with faceless bureaucrats – and Ashley Bloomfield – in Wellington. Whether it has the resources or wherewithal in its numerically diminished state to do that now is an open question.
ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff
Ministers Aupito William Sio, Peeni Henare, Ayesha Verrall, and Health Minister Andrew Little. Health sector-related people were invited to the announcement by Little in the Beehive Banquet Hall at Parliament.