CEO WellSouth Andrew Swanson-Dobbs. PHOTO LINDA ROBERTSON A rival primary health organisation (PHO) to WellSouth has led to a cleanout of associates, but the organisation insists it is still the best provider in a ‘‘fragmented’’ environment. WellSouth chief executive Andrew Swanson-Dobbs said about a dozen Southern GP practices had left to join a rival PHO in the past few months, but he hoped the core services WellSouth provided would largely remain. ‘‘For patients, very little changes. Their practice, their doctor and their care stay where they are. ‘‘A few practices will move to a new PHO from this week. ‘‘WellSouth continues as the PHO for the large majority of practices and patients across the district, and remains the only PHO based in the South. We are Southern; we know Southern.’’ Several clinical services — including mental health programmes, long-term conditions support and pharmacy, dietitian and screening services — are still funded to WellSouth for the entire Southern region. PHOs’ main function is to administer the delivery of government funding for primary healthcare. Mr Swanson-Dobbs said the existence of a rival would mean a more fragmented delivery of health services. ‘‘We will continue to provide the leadership and advice that we can do to the Crown and we will work diligently and constructively with the other PHOs and all the practices in the region,’’ he said. ‘‘The biggest issues that were here yesterday still exist today, which is a lack of workforce, a lack of funding and an inability to really support rurality in primary care and even on health systems. ‘‘None of the problems have gone away overnight, in other words. They’re still very much there.’’ Mr Swanson-Dobbs said the existence of rival PHOs meant it was harder for the South to ‘‘speak with one voice’’ and campaign for better primary care across the region. But PHO general manager Dr Angus Wilson said their establishment was nationwide and, therefore, had more clout. ‘‘There’s certainly quite a lot of dissatisfaction amongst the general practice community with how some PHOs have been working out for them. ‘‘So some of it is, kind of, back to poor funding over quite a long period of time, which is not necessarily the PHOs’ fault. But the GPs are tending to be a bit disillusioned, and they’re looking for change. The other side of it is a lot of PHOs aren’t very transparent.’’ Dr Wilson said, if anything, ‘‘fragmentation’’ was already present in the system. ‘‘We want a fairly lean organisation that fulfils all its obligations, and we want as much money to flow into the front line as possible. ‘‘We don’t need to build up a bigger and bigger organisation that requires more assets and more and more staff and all the cost that goes with that.’’
