Mood of the Boardroom: 'Centralisation will be the enemy of health delivery'

Mainfreight boss Don Braid. Photo / Supplied

Mainfreight boss Don Braid, says health is a large issue for New Zealand and the sanity of the centralisation of health management needs to be questioned.

"What we know at Mainfreight is a decentralised model works very well," he says. "Place responsibility closer to the customer and the outcome for business and the customer is always better.

"Head office decision-making never works well; it adds layers of bureaucracy and slows down implementation."

"A small, well-run Ministry with a great CEO, who regularly visits all regions to understand where the money and health delivery is needed, just might do wonders for health in New Zealand.

"Centralisation will be the enemy of health delivery in our view."

The EMA's Brett O'Riley adds the health system is not necessarily under-funded, "it is inefficient".

Health Minister Andrew Little recently appointed experienced businessman Rob Campbell to chair an establishment board to set-up Health New Zealand seeing through reforms that will disestablish the country's 20 district health boards, to be replaced by one new body (Health NZ. A Māori Health Authority will work alongside Health NZ with a joint role, commissioning for primary, community and kaupapa Māori services.

The quality of the country's health services have been brought into focus by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic which has stretched resources.

CEOs says that housing and education access/standards are the biggest overall source of inequality and should be near the top of the nation's priority list.

Many of the urgent social issues crying out for attention are inter-dependent.

"These portfolio/issue areas are inextricably linked, we have a coordination and delivery problem in as much as we have a funding problem," says Haydon Wilson, chairman of Dentons Kensington Swan.

A banker says: "It was very hard to rank these in relation to each other." A lack of investment and courage over time is very much playing out at the moment.