The Southern District Health Board will share another health
board's planning executive for nine months while it reviews
the role being vacated by Robert Mackway-Jones.
Poor access to surgery forces the renal service into a
''vicious cycle'' in which patients are not always prepared
surgically for home dialysis, which then pressures hospital
services, Dunedin Hospital nephrologist Dr John Schollum said
yesterday.
Health Minister Tony Ryall made a ''huge song and dance'' in
the last Budget about improving cancer care, but fewer than
half of the new cancer nurse co-ordinators have been
recruited nearly a year after they were announced, Labour
health spokeswoman Annette King says.
The Southern District Health Board is proposing to outsource
its fertility service to a private provider, because the
current set-up is not sustainable.
Hiring a ''change manager'' and two ''organisational
development advisers'' on fixed terms for its human resources
department is likely to engender a sense of uncertainty at
the Southern District Health Board, the head of the senior
doctors' union says.
The Southern District Health Board needs to improve
budgeting, monitoring, and financial forecasting,
Auditor-general Lyn Provost's 2011-12 health sector report
says.
The cash-strapped Southern District Health Board has now
spent $634,000 on external advice in a bid to improve its
performance, and will continue to receive support from
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) for some time, it confirmed this
week.
The extra cost of holding two Southern District Health Board
meetings in Queenstown this week is justified, despite the
fact only one member of the public attended, deputy chairman
Paul Menzies says.
District health boards that invested in hospital kitchens in
recent years might have to take a ''hit'' for the greater
good, as moves are made to outsource meals to a single
private provider, Southern District Health Board deputy
chairman Paul Menzies says.
