If you are unfortunate enough to have a malfunctioning bottom and you also live in the Otago Southland region, you’re in double trouble. The best thing you can do to improve your life expectancy is to pick up sticks and move house further north to find a properly functioning district health board.
After years of complaints about lengthy delays for patients needing a colonoscopy, a state of inter-service warfare and stressed clinicians in need of trauma counselling, the Southern District Health Board (SDHB) finally commissioned an external audit of its colonoscopy services and bowel cancer treatment response times.
Why did it take years for people to be told what they already knew anecdotally; that patients were dying because of the woefully inadequate hospital services?
“Authored by Christchurch physician Dr Phil Bagshaw and Dr Steven Ding, the audit found serious problems controlling bowel cancer and dysfunctional relationships between clinicians – an issue known to but unable to be resolved by senior management.”
Stuff
Let’s get this straight.
- People are dying because the health providers and the clinicians, can’t correctly diagnose colon cancer.
- Senior management is aware that the clinicians dropped the ball, but have failed to get them working together.
- The buck stops at the board but the SDHB did not do their job; to address senior management failure and eventually commissioning the external review.
The malfunctioning health board drew the attention of the Minister of Health Minister David Clarke.
“The soon-to-be-elected Southern District Health Board will work under the scrutiny of a crown monitor, Health Minister David Clark said in a surprise announcement yesterday.
“I want to ensure there is continuity of progress in the DHB,” Dr Clark told the Otago Daily Times.
“There have been well-documented issues with the DHB, and I wanted to make sure I still had a line of sight into the DHB as democracy returns.”
“Having a crown monitor in place will not be a novelty for the SDHB; the state of its finances resulted in one being appointed in 2009, and then replaced in 2013 after his retirement.
Otago Daily Times
Southlanders have not taken the democratic process seriously. Years of sub-standard hospital services, overseen by a sub-standard board, indicates a casual attitude toward board appointments or a lack of talent, or both.
The board itself was eventually replaced by commissioners in 2015, with the 2016 board elections subsequently cancelled.”
Why does the minister think that appointing a crown monitor will improve the performance of the yet-to-be-appointed SDHB when previous crown monitors and commissioners failed to fix this long-standing problem?
The SDHB would have an excellent chance of success if it were made up of high calibre members with governance experience, but, unfortunately, appointments are subject to the foibles of local body elections.
Southland District residents must take the blame for the historically shoddy performance of their own health board.
Until they put up a pool of talented and experienced candidates, the next SDHB will fare no better than the last. For Southlanders, the system is broken and the worst thing about it is that they are ultimately responsible. If they are really serious about improving hospital services, they have the opportunity to put this right and they can do far more by putting up top-class candidates than the Minister of Health will do by rolling out a previously failed oversight watchdog.