Newsmaker: Ron Dunham

Ron Dunham

This week's Newsmaker is Lakes District Health Board chief executive Ron Dunham. This week the board reported there were 17 serious adverse events last year including five deaths.

Tell us about yourself.

I'm married to Sally and our family home is on the coast near Maketu. We have two children, Morgan and Matthew.

I love sailing, living by the sea, fishing, cooking and eating.

How has your first 14 months as the Lakes DHB chief executive been?

Is it 14 months already? That went really fast. There's plenty to do and great people to work with.

What do you believe is your biggest achievement/highlight so far?

Getting a focus back on achieving better health outcomes and keeping people safe.

Last week the Lakes District Health Board reported there had been 17 serious adverse events including five deaths in 2012. How do you feel about those figures and what is being done to improve the figures this year?

We now have a very transparent system and we are working hard to address every single adverse outcome. We are committed to getting the number of serious adverse events right down.

It is important to place the number of events in context, and to remember that many of our staff provide services to many thousands of people every year, without any issues.

Along with our staff, I sincerely regret any harm caused to patients - it's not nice for our staff to know that we have failed in our efforts to provide patients with the best service that we would have liked to and that in some cases, there have been patient deaths.

A number of these events were patients who fell when they were under our care. We have started a falls prevention programme to make sure our patients are protected.

Our staff are all focussed on improving the process of reporting, the investigations around events, and improving the quality of our services and patient safety. We very much want to learn from the failures and prevent something similar happening in the future.

You have talked about how disappointing it was to see the DHB had dropped another two points from its last quarter result for shorter stays in the emergency department D target to 90 per cent. What is being done to improve those figures?

Yes I am disappointed with this result and yes it is a long hard slog to achieve this target. I want to acknowledge the dozens of staff determined to get across the 95 per cent mark, so that patients are admitted, discharged or transferred from our emergency departments within six hours.

For every patient that falls below the target, their care plan is reviewed and the questions asked about how could we have done this better and faster.

The latest results are reflective of the July to September months, which are traditionally extremely busy with very sick people coming to us needing treatment.

Are there any new initiatives planned for Rotorua Hospital or Taupo Hospital in 2014?

The Taupo Hospital redevelopment will be completed in 2014. We also want to launch some exciting child health and maternity programmes in the coming months.

What are your five-year goals in your role as chief executive?

Improve the health of the Lakes population, and make the health services some of the best in the country.

If there was one thing you could change about New Zealand's health system what would it be?

I would put more emphasis (and resources) into the prevention of illness. Invest in education, screening and health promotion.

Tell us three things about yourself that most people wouldn't know.

I was born in Mangakino and went to school in Atiamuri.

My wife Sally is a veterinarian in Whakatane.

Both my kids are professional athletes.