Oversight with expertise on tap
The new Southern District Health Board held its first public meetings this week, closely watched by two crown monitors. Health reporter Mike Houlahan talks to Roger Jarrold and Andrew Connolly about what being the eyes and ears of Health Minister David Clark involves.
ROGER Jarrold and Andrew Connolly are Health Minister David Clark’s ‘‘spies’’ at the Southern District Health Board, but there’s nothing cloakanddagger about the way they go about their work.
Appointed as crown monitors, the two men’s task is both to provide counsel and support for the newly elected board, and to keep Dr Clark informed of any potential issues at the health board — an organisation which for the past four years was run by commissioners due to its alarming deficit.
The amount the SDHB is in the red has not decreased — the meeting heard this week its deficit for the year to date is already
$22.5 million — and the presence of the monitors is intended to give the fledgling SDHB as much help as possible to bring the organisation back to a healthy state.
‘‘Our remit is to help and advise,’’ Andrew Connolly, former chairman of the Medical Council and head of department of general surgery at Counties Manukau DHB, said.
‘‘We want to help the board settle and make sure they are asking the right questions.’’
Former Auckland District
Health Board chief financial officer Roger Jarrold said his background and financial experience was there for the board to call on as needed; he made his presence felt at Tuesday’s meeting by offering guidance through some of the more arcane areas of health board budget processes.
‘‘It’s very much an advisory role, through the courtesy of the chair [former Dunedin mayor Dave Cull], as we are monitors,’’ Mr Jarrold said.
‘‘We are not on the board and we do not have voting rights.’’
Being respectively a money man and a clinician, the monitors arrive with impressive CVs and useful skill sets to assist the health board.
Nor are they total strangers to the South; Mr Connolly is a member of the Southern Partnership group overseeing the building of the new Dunedin hospital, while Mr Jarrold grew up in the South Island and studied here.
While both live out of the southern region, they intend to be at every board meeting if possible, believing presence counts for a lot and will help establish a personal relationship between themselves and the board.
‘‘They need to trust us,’’ Mr Jarrold said.
‘‘If we don’t have a good working relationship with the board then it’s not going to work and that’s not what anyone wants.’’
While the monitors sit with the board, they do serve a different master.
There is no formal or timetabled reporting mechanism between the monitors and the Minister, but each anticipates Dr Clark will be keeping in contact with them.
Rather than ‘‘spying’’ on the SDHB and its doings, Mr Connolly said he saw his role as giving Dr Clark confidence, if warranted, that the board was on the right track.
‘‘I thought the questions that were asked at the meeting were really pertinent and there were some very good discussions, particularly for the first meeting of a board trying to get to grips with how the chair likes to run things, getting used to the agenda and how it is presented,’’ he said.
‘‘I think if we had concerns they would not be a surprise to the chair, as they are likely to be concerns of the chair as well.’’
Not only should the minister be confident that the SDHB is doing its job properly, so should the community, he added.
‘‘The community should be invested in its health services; they voted for the board and all of us are going to use the health system at some stage; it is no secret to anyone that this DHB has struggled so we need to make sure that the community is aware of what is going on and is engaged.’’