Letter to the Editor, Tuesday March 1, 2016

Conflicts of interest

As the chief executive of Northland DHB, I wish to respond to recent letters alleging board member conflicts of interest.

Many DHBs have a number of board members who are also councillors, and currently Northland DHB has four. This is not an inherent conflict of interest and usually reflects that these people have a significant interest, in what's best for the whole community rather than just the town they live in.

Conflicts of interest are very rare, but we have a very clear process for managing these, and depending on the nature of the conflict, board members will either not participate in discussions, be absented for these discussions and in some cases not receive any of the board papers relating to these matters. Not all decisions are unanimous, and when a decision is made, one cannot assume that all members supported it.

Northland DHB is charged with balancing the local wants and needs with the wider needs of the whole of Northland, taking into account the tight fiscal constraints that we operate under. There are many times in the past four years that I have been CEO when Sally Macauley has advocated for the Kerikeri community, the Whangarei community, the Kawakawa community, the Kaitaia community, the Dargaville, Whangaroa, Hokianga communities, as well as the Kaikohe community, and in her role as chair of the Community and Public Health Advisory Committee she ensures she is very knowledgeable regarding all of these issues.

I would also like to clarify the Northland DHB position on a Kerikeri after-hours primary care service.

Northland DHB is not in any way against a separate Kerikeri after-hours primary care service. We want the best possible care for all of Northland's patients within available resources, and when the single Mid North after-hours service was set up, the main reason was to ensure that the roster was of a sustainable size and that the on-call demands on our Mid North GPs was not unreasonably onerous.

Everyone involved was acutely aware of what had happened in some other rural New Zealand towns, where availability of GPs and primary care after-hours has been severely compromised by rosters not having a critical number of GPs to service them. With the old fragmented rosters, this was a serious risk in the Mid North.

Northland DHB and its board does not have a strong view whether there should be one or two Mid North rosters. As long as it's as good or better for patients, the rosters are sustainable, the GPs feel supported and safe to practice after-hours care, then we would support whatever the GPs wanted.

Although Northland DHB is happy to support any process, it will be up to the Mid North GPs to look at and plan any sustainable changes, and I understand this is already under way.

NICK CHAMBERLAIN

Chief Executive

Northland DHB