Napier Public Health Action Group (Inc).

16 August 2005.

Napier Public Health Action Group (Inc).

Releasing the results of an enquiry to the Hawke's Bay District Health Board under the Official Information Act, Napier Public Health Action Group (Inc) chairman Don Stuart said today that one of the most urgent tasks facing any incoming government must be to rein in an “administration gone mad”.

The Board reported that during the year to the end of May 2005, it employed 351.7 full time managerial and administrative staff (numbers were reported as full time equivalents.)

In addition there were 4 administrative staff employed on a short-term programme, and 27.3 staff employed solely in management roles in clinical positions; a total of 383 managerial staff in all. This is an increase of 12.8% across the last three years.

“The mushrooming growth in administration seems endless”, Mr Stuart said, “and it's high time it was reversed.

“Let's put it in perspective. In 1990, when there were two fully functioning hospitals in Napier and Hastings with over 600 beds, they were run by a total of fifteen administrators. There were over forty hospital beds for every administrator. Now we have more than one administrator for every hospital bed.

“This ‘Yes Minister’ scenario amounts to a prodigious waste of taxpayer funds. We don't have a health service to support an administration. We have it to provide services such as those so conspicuously lacking in Napier.

“It's even worse than mere waste, because the constant managerial interference with actual health delivery demoralises medical and nursing professionals. Whoever the incoming government may be, there's an urgent need to review the whole system”, Mr Stuart said.

ENDS

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