Heather du Plessis-Allan: It's only a matter of time until Health NZ's boss is gone

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

The boss of Health NZ needs to go.
Her job is no longer tenable after the stunt that was pulled yesterday, where her management team gave a presentation to other staff proposing that the way they would save money was to cut nearly 500 doctors and nearly 1500 nurses.
It doesn't look like Margie Apa can plead ignorance or innocence on this one, because according to a source who spoke to the media outlet Newsroom, the presentation wasn’t a stunt - those cuts were actually planned.

And at least one region of the organisation had already started making plans to consult and implement the changes. It's hard to imaging that happening without the CEO signing off on it.

It is impossible to have confidence in her as the boss of Health NZ if she genuinely believes that the way to save money is to cut doctors and nurses in a health system that already doesn’t have enough doctors and nurses.
She was already on thin ice before yesterday, because from the way she was running the place, it had been blowing its budget by $130 million every month for five months.
That's not competence, that's unbelievable.

I think she’s gone. The new Health Commissioner Lester Levy is not expressing full confidence in her, and he's failed to do that a number of times now.

He has also gone public with the fact that he’s called her about these planned cuts and made it very clear that this is 'unacceptable' and is not to be ever repeated. And he told the minister’s office that 'there will be consequences'.

So my guess is - she's gone. It's only a matter of time.

And frankly, given how this place has been run and the nuts idea for how they were going to save money, this is the best outcome.

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