Stress of cuts took toll on Edmond

By MARTIN JOHNSTON, health reporter

Graeme Edmond is holding his silence about precisely why he quit his $400,000-a-year job as Auckland's top health administrator, but others are filling in the gaps.

Mr Edmond resigned on Tuesday after seven years as chief executive of the Auckland District Health Board and its predecessors, citing differences of opinion with the nine-member board chaired by Wayne Brown.

But senior Auckland health sources say that although there is no single cause, the key reason was the relentless pressure to cut costs, followed by a lack of support from Mr Brown.

One said: "I think the heart of it is what's required in the [so-far-confidential] district annual plan to break even, having to make a whole lot of people redundant and the risks around that to the service, plus the huge pressures on Graeme."

The Government is demanding that district health boards stop running deficits by 2005-2006. The Auckland board's deficit was about $49 million for the past 12 months.

"It will be a big challenge to get from minus fifty to zero. It is going to require a lot of pain," said the source.

The board employs the equivalent of about 7000 fulltime staff and has shed more than 100 clinical and administrative jobs as part of the shift into the new super-hospital from October. A further 250 are planned to go within a year under the re-organisation, promised to save $40 million a year.

Mr Edmond's employment deal had almost two years left to run, but he said he was not receiving "anything like two years' pay".

He took a cut in his potential pay of about $60,000, bringing it to between $420,000 and $429,000 in 2001 when district health boards replaced health and hospital services. At the time he said the cut came despite external consultants finding that the new job was significantly bigger.

His actual pay was even less: between $400,000 and $410,000 in 2001-2002.

Sources said Mr Edmond was troubled by Mr Brown's public attacks on the management and the board ignoring advice against changing the name of the Starship children's hospital (before it backed down in April).

Mr Brown could not be contacted yesterday, but deputy chairwoman Margaret Horsburgh said she could not recall any such advice about Starship and the board was supportive of the management.

A source said Mr Edmond's post was "the sort of job where you need everyone being supportive. You would want the person you are reporting to to be constructive and sympathetic".

Last August, when faced with cutting $25 million from the deficit, Mr Edmond said he would be unable to find the last $10 million without axing services.

On reading this in the Herald, Mr Brown contradicted Mr Edmond: the savings would be made without cuts.

When Mr Brown chaired his first health board meeting, in February 2001, he rubbished the management's scheme for streamlining administration.

"The change programme is a joke. It needs to be deeper, broader and faster," Mr Brown said.

That meeting was also marked by Mr Edmond's departure from sitting at the chairman's side. Around the quadrangle of board tables, staff now sit at the opposite end from the chairman.

It appeared then that Mr Edmond was taking the medicine dished out by the chairman, whom Prime Minister Helen Clark and Health Minister Annette King appointed to deal with the board's financial woes.

Mr Edmond dismissed questions about resigning.