Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Malcolm Mulholland: Patient Voice Aotearoa chair on Health NZ's billion dollar deficit and

Transcript

Malcolm Mulholland: Patient Voice Aotearoa chair on Health NZ's billion dollar deficit and · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Health New Zealand to FATO orders released around four hundred
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: pages of financial documents and it details a big turnaround
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: in March this year. We were expecting a big surplus.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: By April a one point four billion dollar deficit. What
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: on earth went wrong? One bright spot is that overspending
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: has started to drop, albeit slightly. It was one hundred
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and sixty three million dollars in July. It's down to
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: one hundred and forty nine million dollars for August. Joining
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: me this morning is Patient Advocate, a chair of Patient
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Voice Altier At Malcolm mulholland. Malcolm, Good morning.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Morning, Ryan.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Are you worried about Health New Zealand's ability to actually count?
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, I was flabergasted at what was revealed yesterday. To
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: as you say, go from expecting a half a billion
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: dollar surplus to one point four billion dollar deficit in
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: the space of one month, to me, requires a lot
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: of explaining.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: They have said that they've hired more nurses, more fte
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: nurses throughout the period and they thought that some would leave,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: but they haven't, so they've ended up with more than
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: they need. Presumably.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I think that's just bulbish. It to be
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Frank Ryan, There's no way you can tell me that
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: we have too many nurses right now in New Zealand.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm doing a roadshow right now visiting communities
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: talking about healthcare, and they're all telling me we need
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: more nurses, we need more doctors. You've got masters in
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: hospital that did a calculation where they believe they are
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: forty nurses short while a hospital can't even open because
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: they don't have enough stuff. That tells me that the
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: FTE number by which Health New Zealand were calculating, you
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: know what is a good number was far too low
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: to begin with.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: You're just not buying any of this. I mean, the
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: bigger problem for me is not necessarily where the spending
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: has come from, just the fact that they can can't
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: They didn't identify it, they weren't able to preempt it.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, who is the person control and control of
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the purse strings here?
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, that's a fantastic Christian and I think that
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: that's one that definitely requires more investigational questions to be
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: asked because we just simply do not know. And it's
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: not good enough that we don't know. We need to know.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Health is the biggest expenditure item of the government. It's
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: always been like that and it will continue to be
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: that way. We need to be on top of our
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: finances when it comes to the New Zealand health system.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Hey, good luck with your rest of your road show, Malcolm.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks that right. I'm looking forward to going to
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: AMU to madubsh Burton todaily in chrostage tomorrow and you know,
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: really concerned actually at the state of our health system
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, drive safe, Malcolm, Thanks so much for your time.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: That's Malcolm mulholland. He's the chair of Patient Voice ALTI
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: at I.
• 2:57
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• 2:59
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• 3:01
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• 3:04
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