DHBs began consultation with staff on Friday about the national finance, procurement and supply chain programme, introduced by Health Benefits Ltd, to improve the way DHBs purchase goods and services.
The programme is expected to save half a billion dollars over the next 10 years with all of the savings being reinvested into supporting frontline health services. Link to media release
As a result, 13 full-time positions out of a total 439 affected positions will be lost across all DHBs.
Roles spread across regional centres
The programme, which will roll out over two years, proposes 146 full-time supply chain positions will be retained on site within DHBs and 280 finance, procurement and supply chain positions will be spread across regional centres such as Christchurch, Wellington, Palmerston North and Auckland.
HBL communications and engagement manager Mark Reynolds says it is too early to say exactly how each DHB will be affected.
However, at Southern DHB in Dunedin about half of the 50 finance, supply chain and procurement roles are expected to be relocated to the regional centres or eliminated.
Centralised not necessarily better: ASMS
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Ian Powell expects there will be a large number of redundancies as a result of the plan and is sceptical about the expected savings.
Many people will not want to relocate to the larger centres and as a result there are likely to be many redundancies and another large bureaucracy established in Auckland, Dr Powell says.
There is also a high level of scepticism among DHBs about projected savings, he says.
"If you take the South Island, there's a strong belief that they were actually making savings by better regional work with the South Island Alliance."
While some things are better managed nationally, there is not the confidence that centralising services is necessarily better, Dr Powell says.
Retain or redeploy
The Public Service Association is urging DHBs to ensure that workers affected can be retained or redeployed within their own DHBs.
The PSA says there will be some job losses, some staff will transfer automatically over to the company, Health Alliance, which will run the centralised services, while others will have to reapply for positions and relocate to Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch.
PSA national secretary Richard Wagstaff says in a media release that while the shared services plan makes sense in terms of efficiencies and savings, there is no doubt the changes will be unsettling and disruptive for staff involved.
"The biggest impact will be for staff in the smaller DHBs where jobs are being disestablished or decisions will have to be made around relocating or redundancy.
"It clearly represents another blow for regional New Zealand as this is where the job loss will hit the hardest."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Liane Topham-Kindley
Quelle/Source: New Zealand Doctor Online, 14.10.2013
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