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Stuff
How key health sector players rated Te Whatu Ora after its first year of existence. Clockwise from top left: Te Whatu Ora’s chief executive Margie Apa, Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall, National’s health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti, Paul Goulter of the NZ Nurses’ Organisation, Dr Julian Vyas of the Association of Salaraied Medical Specilaists and Dr Deborah Powell of the NZ Resident Doctors’ Association
For an in-depth look at Te Whatu Ora’s performance, visit thepost.co.nz
A narrow pass mark: this is how Te Whatu Ora’s chief executive Fepulea’i Margie Apa rates her own organisation’s performance over the past year.
A new nationalised health system was announced with great fanfare at the end on 2021. Elected district health boards were off to the scrap heap and more than 80,000 employees would now have one employer from July 1, 2022.
“I’d give us a pass mark, because there are lots of green shoots where we are seeing a difference … but we certainly need to, in many areas, support our frontline carers and providers and go faster on some of the supports and platforms we need that will enable people to get more access to care,” Apa said.
“So what’s that, a B minus? Two-and-a-half out of five?”
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Her frank rating comes on the inaugural anniversary of the country’s colossal health employer: one which has repeatedly been accused of failing to acknowledge calls the health system is in crisis and ignoring voices of those working on the sector’s frontline.
Te Whatu Ora’s inaugural year has had some very public speed bumps, from data snafus to the sacking of former chairperson Rob Campbell, to poor communication on Covid-19 drugs.
Then there was the damning staff satisfaction results, where two thirds of surveyed staff said they did not have the resources to do their jobs well and the dire revelations clinicians had more than a millenium of annual said they could not take annual leave.
Te Whatu Ora’s transparency, or lack thereof, been repeatedly challenged by those inside and outside the organisation.
Dr Julian Vyas, of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS), said it was a “disappointing failure of transparency” that the survey results had still not been officially shared.
“This inevitably creates a concern that Te Whatu Ora are trying to hide things.”
As the one-year mark rolled around, Stuff widely canvassed frontline workers who universally believed their working conditions were unchanged, if not worse than a year ago and care was harder to access for patients, with waitlists for non-urgent care still years-long.
But there was a sense of weary optimism that while progress had been slow, long waits for care could turn around if their employer listened to their concerns and plugged workforce gaps.
Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall still had a bad taste from the emergency department data hiccup – which incorrectly made it look like wait times had improved. But she otherwise scored the organisation “highly” for its performance over the past year.
Asked if conditions for New Zealanders accessing healthcare were better or worse than they were a year ago, Verrall said it was “starting to improve and we need to speed it up”.
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