Frank Marvin runs his eye over the National Health Board expert panel’s groundbreaking report into Wakatipu services
Leaving: SDHB boss Brian Rousseau
The Wakatipu isn’t alone in mistrusting Southern District Health Board – the National Health Board’s panel of experts is also sceptical.
The panel’s sentiments surface in its far-reaching report on Queenstown health services released last week.
Among the panel’s 21 recommendations are: Retaining and expanding the existing Lakes District Hospital; creating a “health campus” with an emergency department, a CT scanner and more aged residential care; and for it to become a training ground for rural practitioners.
Under a subheading “Implementing Change”, the NHB orders SDHB to get cracking: “Implementation [of the panel’s findings] is critical to moving the Wakatipu forward after years of uncertainty and to start the process of building trust and confidence ... between the community and SDHB.”
No duck-shoving: “SDHB [must] show leadership and a strong presence in the region to advance this range of initiatives”.
And Wellington will be watching, the report warns: “The NHB will continue to support the implementation process to ensure the Wakatipu population receives the benefits from this process.” There are also local scrutineers: “The [Wakatipu] Community Reference Group will play a key role in keeping this programme of work on track and ensuring SDHB delivers on these commitments.”
Perhaps because SDHB boss Brian Rousseau quits his $500,000 job tomorrow week, the NHB panel leaves nothing to chance by laying down a detailed Wakatipu action plan, broken down into short-, medium- and long-term tasks for SDHB to follow over the next 12 months.
Such a specific plan can only be to pin SDHB down – a wise move, considering a key initiative in the Wakatipu health plan has already been stalled. The NHB wants a CT scanner at Frankton’s Lakes District Hospital for on-the-spot diagnoses of Queenstown’s high number of trauma patients.
At its meeting last Friday, SDHB chairman Joe Butterfield begged for the scanner decision to be “parked” for a month – to resolve whether it should be housed at Clyde’s Dunstan Hospital instead.
The non-merger merger made Queenstown the loser The expert panel found “many health services were still largely based on historical DHB boundaries” and “there was a lack of regional planning of clinical services”.
Loosely translated, last year’s merger of the Otago and Southland District Health Boards has been achieved in name only – and
Queenstown’s the loser.
Two particularly telling examples are cited.
Until Mountain Scene exposed the scandal, Wakatipu cancer patients were forced into 400km round trips to Invercargill for chemotherapy – instead of scooting just 90kms down to Clyde’s Dunstan Hospital, which comes under Otago auspices.
The implied criticism is that a fully-integrated DHB would simply have looked at the map.
Last week’s report also refers to Wakatipu patients having to travel to out-of-town specialists – usually in Invercargill – instead of the specialists travelling up here.
“A working mother explained the challenge of multiple visits to Southland Hospital for specialist outpatient care for her four children with the same condition,” the panel notes.
The ineffective DHB merger has resulted in inequality of services, the NHB’s expert panel alleges.
“Patients from the Dunstan [Hospital] catchment are able to access a greater number of outpatient services locally than those living in the Wakatipu.
“Greater effort is needed to consign outdated and arbitrary provincial boundaries to history,” the report says.
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