Privatise health administration, says Auckland chief

By MARTIN JOHNSTON and RENEE KIRIONA

Auckland health chief Wayne Brown has suggested privatising the $100 million-a-year of administration work handled by the region's district health boards.

The Auckland District Health Board chairman raised the possibility at a board meeting before leaving early to catch a plane home to Northland.

He said analysts had suggested the three boards could save about $7 million by merging many of their back-office functions.

"I don't know if that's good or bad ... There are external parties that are prepared to bid for the work."

But the Waitemata and Counties Manukau boards have ruled out privatising the work and say if Auckland wants to go down that track it will do so alone.

Waitemata and Counties already have a joint administrative services company, called healthAlliance, to handle information technology, human resources (including recruitment), payroll, purchasing and finance.

Counties chief executive Stephen McKernan said the joint venture, which had been running for three years, had saved the boards $10 million a year between them.

"We welcome Auckland to come on board with us [Counties and Waitemata] but we have no plans to go down the privatisation track," Mr McKernan said.

"We have confidence in our managers and team to do the work."

The head of the Waitemata board, Dwayne Crombie, agreed.

"We have no plans to privatise the work but if Auckland is considering that then that is a decision for them.

"There's no doubt that if all of us work together there will be better collaboration and efficiency."

The Auckland board had an opportunity to merge administrative functions with the two others three years ago but chose not to.

All three boards are considering a proposal for a back-office merger in another agency called NewShare. Health Minister Annette King has called on boards to collaborate to try to save money.