There has been a great deal of media
coverage recently about the Canterbury health system and the constraints it
faces. Amid the confusion, it is timely to recognise what the total health
system (led by the Canterbury DHB) has actually achieved.
Despite the challenging circumstances
post the 2010/2011 earthquakes, our health system has continued to deliver the
very best care to our community. There will always be people whose needs
haven’t been met, but our health system has always been there for the people of
Canterbury. The leadership of our health system has made a personal commitment
to ensuring that, whatever happened after the earthquakes, the community could
rely on its health system.
Keeping the Canterbury health system on
track has necessitated creative solutions to problems never faced by any
organisation before. The system needed
to keep services running safely from damaged buildings, including delivering
surgery during thousands of aftershocks and it needed to find innovative ways
to change services in response to the changed needs of broken and fragmented
communities. This included a dramatic increase in mental health demand. It also needed to have an eye to the future and
planning future services and facilities.
The enormity of these challenges cannot
be underestimated. The 18,000 people that work in community and primary care,
hospital, mental health and public health services took this opportunity to
make the Canterbury health system even better. And they have. In every respect
it rates highly amongst its peers as an efficient, effective health system. It
is internationally recognised and praised as one of the top five integrated
health systems in the world.
Solutions developed in Canterbury are
now being adopted around the world. In the UK another journey is starting, to implement
the Canterbury way of working. This follows in the footsteps of most of
Australia. The NHS England transformation strategy “Five Years Forward” was
informed by what they learned from Canterbury.
Canterbury clinicians and leaders are sought-after speakers in
international forums. Locally, the Canterbury approach has been used as a case study
by the Productivity Commission, the States Services Commission and ACC.
Internationally, the list is longer and includes the World Bank, the Kings Fund
and the World Health Organisation. And last year the Canterbury Clinical Network
won the IPANZ Supreme Award for public sector value.
These are high accolades indeed!
But all of this is at risk as yet
another challenge is thrown at a system which is already so stretched. The
replacement acute hospital is still two years away and our population is
increasing rapidly. However, and inexplicably, Canterbury’s share of national
funding is declining which is placing extreme financial pressure on the DHB.
With everything Canterbury has had to
deal with, and in unique circumstances, I would have thought that the Ministry
of Health might have considered the impact of continuing to apply the standard
funding formula. They might have questioned a formula that reduces Canterbury’s
share of national funding, despite an increasing population. Other experts have
noted that post earthquakes, population changes and changes in health need,
make the use of a population based funding formula inappropriate. Canterbury is leading the world in
understanding the impacts of a major natural disaster, on a first world country
and the possibilities of an integrated system. The rest of the world is
watching Canterbury!
No comments:
Post a Comment