Nigel Murray saga clean-up continues
‘‘I think it’s poor business practice for us not to have signed agreements . . .’’
A health contract covering tens of millions of dollars of services lay unsigned for two years due to a ‘‘strained relationship’’ with disgraced Waikato DHB boss Nigel Murray. Murray’s relationship with Pinnacle Midlands Health Network was a key reason for the delay. Health bosses recently signed a 2016/17 contract for almost $84 milliion to cover services Pinnacle delivers for four DHBs, led by Waikato. ‘‘I was certainly shocked to find [it wasn’t signed] – I had no idea,’’ Waikato DHB interim executive director of strategy and funding Tanya Maloney said. Money in the 2016/17 project was to cover services including funding for enrolled patients at doctor clinics, GP services for homeless Waikato people and home visits for terminally ill people. The basic agreement is ‘‘evergreen’’, Maloney said, but requires an update each year because costs and projects change. Even without that update, Pinnacle continued to deliver the health services and the DHB paid for them. Maloney has been in her role about four months and the lack of a signed agreement was discovered through a review she commissioned soon after starting. ‘‘I just think it’s poor business practice for us not to have signed agreements with the providers that we work with,’’ she said. So, at the time Maloney would expect to be signing the 2018/19 agreement, the DHB has been playing catch-up from 2016/17 – ‘‘tidying up some of the messiness of the past’’. The DHB had been behind a contract delay the year before, she said. ‘‘That relates to some of the strained relationships in the past that we’ve had between the executive in this DHB with Pinnacle Midlands Health Network.’’ Then the two organisations struggled to agree on how to spend the flexible funding part of the contract, she said. Eventually, they decided on projects including doctor services for homeless people, mental health counselling, home visits for terminally ill people and maraebased clinics, a statement from Pinnacle said. The 2016/17 contract has now been signed by both parties, and the DHB is working to catch the contracts up to the current 2018/19 year. The other three DHBs involved in the Pinnacle contract are Taranaki, Lakes and Tairawhiti. Both Waikato DHB and Pinnacle say they are working together well now. Back in 2016/17, ‘‘the relationship between the organisations was strained at the executive level’’, a statement from chief executive David Oldershaw said. ‘‘However, we would also like to acknowledge working relationships at the peer to peer/service delivery level remained productive.’’ Murray said through his lawyers that he did not want to comment. A Waikato DHB agreement with Hauraki PHO was also a year behind, but Maloney said that was not a relationship issue. The $33.5m agreement for 2017/18 has been signed after discussion at a July health board meeting, and the DHB is working on the 2018/19 update.