Chronic failure at DHB
As the Nigel Murray horror show unravels in a mess of bad publicity, we discover that the Waikato District Health Board botched the CEO’s hiring … and firing.
In spite of warnings from the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, Murray was hired. He was dismissed from his former role at Fraser Health in Canada but nobody spoke to Fraser Health for a reference check.
When he was in Southland, as CEO of that DHB, he was frequently absent. Yet the Waikato DHB hired him.
And yesterday, the QC responsible for investigating the Murray shemozzle said he should have been fired and disciplined by his Waikato DHB employers. But Murray was allowed to resign, presumably because the DHB wanted to avoid embarrassing headlines and a drawnout employment saga.
The man who oversaw the hiring has also botched the firing. But former Waikato DHB chairman Bob Simcock has tried to avoid blame by suggesting that the board was acting on legal advice from a lawyer hired by the Health Ministry. And that advice was to allow Murray to resign. Hang on a minute. What about governance, leadership and moral authority?
Simcock was the chairman of the board, not some ministry flunky. He answered to taxpayers and the good people of Waikato who relied on him and the board to get things right. Healthcare is about life and death and if it’s not done right, people die.
It was Simcock’s job to decide whether to do the prudent thing or the morally right thing. Simcock failed this fundamental test of leadership in that he never saw prudence and morality as sometimes separate paths.
That choice was his and to hide behind a lawyer’s recommendation now shows an anaemic level of courage that illustrates he was never up to leading an organisation as important to the lives of so many as our health board.
So Murray, the old charmer, walked. I had a little bit to do with Nigel. I liked him.
When the story about his spending broke he told me that he was embarrassed, because of the medical school proposal, but there was nothing to worry about and all ‘‘the fuss’’ was over ‘‘a couple of hotel meals and a taxi ride’’.
That was the last time we spoke. The first time we met, Murray was upbeat about his new gig and promised transparency.
He arrived at the DHB, lofted on a breeze of obsequious praise from Simcock and the board who assured that his referees universally described him in ‘‘outstanding terms’’.
He said he was here to sort out the cultural issues and general dysfunction, the legacy from his predecessor Craig Climo.
In a 2014, 47-page Health Ministry report into the Waikato DHB, investigators found a litany of areas in need of improvement, including a surfeit of managers, staff kept in the dark, needless complexity, poor communication between departments, no allowance for innovation and unacceptable delays in the treatment of patients. Another point made against the board was the poor visibility of the top echelon of the organisation’s management to its staff.
So many reports and investigations and so little progress. Four years later and the sleepy board has failed us again.