Health system reform: DHB board members gone by July without compensation

More than 200 board members around the country will be stood down without any compensation when the District Health Boards are abolished in less than four months.

Board members have not yet received any formal notification from the Ministry of Health or Health Minister - but are well aware their days are numbered.

The appointments of the approximate 204 board members, who are paid more than $5.3 million a year in taxpayer-funded money, will be terminated at the same time the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill comes into force on July 1.

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It will also mark the end of the public electing local representatives to govern the health sector after 21 years.

Health Minister Andrew Little confirmed there will be no need for elected boards or officials when the 20 DHBs no longer exist.

The new legislation is on track to be passed in July, cutting board members' three-year term short by three months. They are also not eligible for any compensation.

Instead, the millions of dollars saved each year on their fees will be reallocated within the overall health budget, Little said.

Health Minister Andrew Little believes communities will have their voices heard under the new health system. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Despite the removal of the political and publicly elected board members, Little said the community would still get a say as under the new locality model there would be much greater community consultation, involvement and representation over how health care is designed and delivered.

He also pointed to "other mechanisms" to make sure there was much wider consumer, whānau and community input in the planning and delivery of services at the regional and national levels that would increase the influence New Zealanders will have over the health system.

But former executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists and health commentator Ian Powell said Little's explanation was "rubbish" and feared the new model would create a greater bureaucratic barrier between hospitals and the community.

"It's a sound bite, not an explanation," he said.

"They are abolishing DHBs without knowing what the system that is going to replace it looks like."

While Powell supported the introduction of the Māori Health Authority and Crown Health Agency, he was concerned the demise of DHBs would make the system even more centrally bureaucratised and much less accountable.

Powell believed the Government was being too influenced by business consultants and thought carrying on with the restructure in the middle of a pandemic couldn't come at a worst time.

Long-serving Canterbury DHB board member Andrew Dickerson said while he was aware the role of board members would stop on June 30, he had received no communication personally from the Ministry of Health of the Minister about that.

Dickerson supported reducing the number DHBs, but didn't support moving to a single centralised agency.

"It remains to be seen if it (the locality model) will provide greater representation than the current model." He questioned what access the media and public would have to information and meetings in the future and where local people in the community would go for assistance.

Dickerson has spent his entire career in the health sector and wanted to see it succeed, but believed the greatest obstacle to the health sector making progress was endless restructuring.

"If the clinical staff were given greater autonomy to just get on with the job that I know they want to do with less political interference and restructuring then I think both our health sector and our community would be better for it."