Hospital yet to advertise for chief executive

IT may be some time before a new chief executive is appointed at Oamaru Hospital.

The position has remained vacant since former chief executive Robert Gonzales announced his sudden departure on May 4 after 17 years in the role.

In June, Waitaki District Health Services chairman Chris Swann told the Otago Daily

Times recruitment for a new chief executive was under way.

Speaking yesterday, he said the hospital’s board had made progress narrowing down what specific set of skills it was looking for, but was not yet in a position to formally advertise the role and there was no ‘‘definitive time period’’ in which to fill it.

‘‘We’re working through a process. We have got an idea of exactly what we want . . . there’s a lot of changes happening at the moment at the hospital so there’s a lot of things we need to work on before we go out and finalise exactly what we’re going to do,’’ Mr Swann said.

Those changes included several recommended in last year’s clinicallyled review of services at the hospital that involved the Waitaki District Councilcontrolled company and the Southern District Health Board, as well as the implementation of the health board’s primary and community healthcare strategy. On June 14 the Otago Daily

Times reported the company was working with the SDHB to address staffing issues at clinical and management level.

The sudden resignation of Mr Gonzales, coupled with other resignations, had put pressure on the hospital’s ability to recruit doctors, and came on top of a shift from a specialist to generalist model at the hospital, which was part of a continuing transition which involved doctors being trained and recruited as rural health specialists.

The recent appointment of Dr Fazal Mann to the role of rural hospital medical specialist was vital to the hospital’s effort to attract doctors to Oamaru, Mr Swann said.

As a result, two fulltime doctors had started at the hospital within the past three weeks.

For now, hospital operations were being overseen by interim chief executive Janice Clayton, with support from South Canterbury District Health Board director of primary health partnerships and allied health Ruth Kibble, who has been seconded to Oamaru on a shortterm contract, and Dr Mann.