Health professionals must control service planning

11.3.09

Veteran Campaigner Calls For Health Professionals To Take Control

Veteran rural health campaigner and Democrats for Social Credit health spokesman David Tranter is ending 18 years of involvement in health issues and advocacy with a call for government to return health professionals to their rightful place in the planning of health services.

"When I first became involved in 1991 the era of health professionals having the major say in the planning and running of services was already coming to an end and the corporatisation of matters like hospital management saw the takeover by a proliferation of often ill-qualified and irrelevantly experienced managers-for-everything", Mr. Tranter said.

"This change is typified on the South Island West Coast where the pre-1993 system of about a dozen administrators and hospital policy driven by health professionals has been transformed to the point where new administrative positions are continually being created and hospital policy is in the hands of empire-building managers who frequently have little understanding of the concerns expressed by the Coast's health professionals.

From outstanding nurse Peter Neame in the 90s through to widely respected anaesthetist Judy Forbes last year, any West Coast health professional speaking out for the rights of patients and health workers has been either silenced by management or has felt forced to leave because their ethical standards were so compromised by working for the DHB", Mr. Tranter said.

"The only way this situation is ever going to be returned to sanity, both on the West Coast and elsewhere in New Zealand, is for a genuinely caring government with a strong health minister to reverse the corporatisation of health management and ensure that health professionals drive the planning of services", Mr. Tranter said.

"Administrators must be returned to their proper function of supporting those who work at the coal face instead of playing career ladder-climbing games and inventing ways of spending money which should be going to health services", he said.

Website: www.democrats.org

ENDS

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