Health sector DHB blunder should see heads roll
The top health ministry official is running out of chances, writes Stacey Kirk.
How on earth could they get it so wrong?
The Health Minister hasn’t called for the head of his top official, but perhaps he should.
What’s incredible is that Director General of Health Chai Chuah didn’t offer it on a plate, the minute he had to tell Jonathan Coleman the individual DHB funding allocations the Government crowed about on Budget day were wrong.
Every. Single. One of them.
The Ministry of Health managed to botch up the amount of money DHBs would be getting to the tune of $38 million, and that’s incompetence, pure and simple. There were 14 DHBs that were overpaid that will have to give up some of their funds, while six were shortchanged.
The Government provides the total funding for the health sector; it’s the ministry’s job to dish it out. The way they do it is through a population-based funding formula.
It’s a model they’ve used for 15 years, which takes into account DHB-population size as well as demographics like ethnicity and age, to ensure funding is distributed fairly across the country.
How on earth could they get it so wrong?
Director General of Health Chai Chuah offered the excuse that the error was ‘‘only on paper’’, and DHBs had not actually received any funding yet.
But he knows health spending never stops, and those DHBs will have made plans to spend that much-needed money. Now 14 DHBs are scrambling to either scrap or limit services they intended offering, or claw the money from elsewhere in their budget.
Those that lose are the patients for whom those DHBs had identified a need to spend money on.
Incredibly, it’s firmly understood that among the options floated was to simply let the error slide – ’’the chips had fallen’’, as it were.
But I’d wager by the level of Health Minister Jonathan Coleman’s fury, that would not have flown with him. There was an element of ‘‘you cock up, you wear it’’ in the nature of his public comments.
He would also be acutely aware of a fairness issue the Government could not explain away if overpaid DHBs were allowed to keep their money, while an extra $38m was miraculously sourced from the back of the couch to top up the DHBs that were short-changed.
Not that Coleman can wash his hands entirely of the saga. Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice?
Well, this is not the first egregious budgeting error that the ministry has been responsible for under Chuah. A 2014 accounting error saw the ministry miscalculate how much money it had for a new office refurbishment by $18m.
The latest blunder is arguably worse. Not because it’s an election year – although in the eyes of National that surely strengthens the need to make an example of someone – but because it undermines the integrity of the system used to fund the health sector.
Health funding is never enough and constantly scrutinised. If there’s also a question hanging over whether those funds are being distributed fairly to New Zealanders most in need of them, then that falls squarely on the Government.
But Coleman is only as good as the information he is given, and that has been found grossly wanting this week.
Chai Chuah must surely be running out of lives.