Senior Doctors Congratulate Green MP For Successful Amendment To Health Bill

“Senior doctors congratulate Green MP and health spokesperson Kevin Hague for his successful amendment to the bill currently before Parliament seeking to amend the Public Health and Disability Act,” said Mr Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, today.

“A positive feature of the government’s bill is that it establishes an important much needed new organisation (Quality and Safety Commission) to actively promote quality improvement and safety in the health system. Unfortunately the new commission would have been undermined by a requirement that it should become self-funding. This would have risked making it financially unviable and compromise its independence and integrity because of the danger of being beholden to its funders.”

“Fortunately Kevin Hague successfully proposed an amendment to remove this self-funding requirement. His amendment was adopted by Parliament last week. The government deserves congratulations for agreeing to establish the Quality and Safety Commission while Mr Hague equally deserves congratulations for ensuring that it was not doomed to failure.”

“We are delighted that Mr Hague was significantly influenced by our submission to Parliament which highlighted this risk. As a former district health board chief executive, he also had his own experience to draw upon and it is pleasing that Parliament listened to him,” concluded Mr Powell.

ENDS

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