Roles dumped in SDHB proposal

THE roles of chief operating officer (COO) and deputy chief executive will be dumped in a sweeping management restructure proposal unveiled at the Southern District Health Board.

Longserving senior manager Lexie O’Shea is both COO and deputy chief executive.

In the formal document released yesterday, chief executive Chris Fleming said a new director of specialist services would replace the COO role.

The proposed restructuring would not slim the executive leadership team.

Its number would increase by one to 13 (including the chief executive), but there is quite a bit of change in the makeup of the roles.

The brunt of job losses would be borne at the next two levels of management.

Across the three management levels in the proposal, 59 roles would go and 36 would be created.

Staff whose roles had been scrapped would be able to apply for the new roles.

Mr Fleming wants to introduce more sitespecific senior roles in Dunedin and Invercargill.

The last big restructuring — five years ago under a different chief executive — did away with many sitespecific roles in a bid to make the health board more united.

‘‘Significant proportions of our leadership team have districtwide responsibilities,’’ Mr Fleming’s proposal says.

‘‘While this, too, is understandable as we have sought to truly become one DHB, we are spending far too much time travelling between our respective sites and at times having a limited leadership presence at each of our locations on a daytoday basis.’’

Almost all roles would be advertised internally and opened to external applicants only if necessary.

The restructuring would be subject to a consultation period ending May 26.

A final structure would be announced a month later, and the formal application process would start in late June.

Mr Fleming said he wanted to reduce the complexity of management and make it focus more on ‘‘critical strategic areas’’, such as community healthcare.

‘‘We must grapple with substantial infrastructure challenges requiring fundamental changes to the way in which services are delivered.

‘‘We face tremendous pres sure from a relatively static but ageing population — with the exception of significant rapid growth in the Central Otago Lakes area — a legacy of underinvestment in infrastructure, and continued fragmentation of service planning and delivery despite having been merged for a number of years now, and continued tight fiscal settings,’’ the proposal says.

eileen.goodwin@odt.co.nz

THE New Zealand Medical Students’ Association has come out against a bid to set up a third medical school over concerns graduates could go jobless.

NZMSA said yesterday it was concerned New Zealand’s already stretched health system could not accommodate the increase in medical students if the Waikato District Health Board and University of Waikato’s joint bid for a medical school was approved.

President Kieran Bunn said increasing student numbers at both the University of Otago and University of Auckland medical schools had already stretched the system, with nine students initially unable to find firstyear jobs after graduating last year.

It had also made it ‘‘essentially impossible’’ for international students who studied in New Zealand to stay in the country and serve the community which trained them

‘‘Without supervised employment straight out of medical school, these graduates are legally unable to progress their training.

‘‘An increase in medical students from the Waikato Medical School will put further strain on this bottleneck and therefore prevent it achieving its goals for rural communities,’’ Mr Bunn said.

The medical students’ association was also concerned the extra students in Waikato would displace Auckland medical students completing their training in the region.

He acknowledged there was a shortage of rural GPs in hardtostaff areas, but NZMSA was not convinced a third medical school was the most appropriate solution.

‘‘This proposal has clearly identified a significant problem in the distribution of medical services in New Zealand.

‘‘However, without considerable investment throughout the health sector, this proposal may simply worsen another problem: the waste of investment in medical graduates who cannot find a job.’’

Waikato University did not respond to questions about NZMSA’s concerns yesterday.

A spokeswoman said vicechancellor Prof Neil Quigley was travelling overseas.