Brian Rudman: What's in a name, Mr Brown? Try calling it 'boiled cabbage' and see

If Auckland District Health Board chairman Wayne Brown thinks he can shorten the queues at Starship children's hospital with a name change, why didn't he come up with something really effective, like Boiled Cabbage.

With a brand like that, he could have spooked the kids and had their parents gagging as well.

And to get the message through to those too young to read, he could have hammered the message home with a giant neon head of broccoli on the roof as well.

That would have seen off any remaining little window shoppers.

After the furore of the past few days, with everyone from Xena, Warrior Princess to Prime Minister Helen Clark atop the Arc de Triomphe lobbing grenades in his direction, a chastened Mr Brown has begun to back down, claiming he and his board were amazed at the strength of community support for the Starship name.

He further claimed they "certainly didn't intend to cause any upset", by abolishing the Starship name.

I find both claims hard to believe, as far as Mr Brown is concerned anyway.

Late in January last year, soon after his appointment, we talked about his plans for the deficit-burdened organisation he had inherited, which he likened to "being asked to turn around an iceberg with a 10 horse-power outboard".

He complained of departments competing with each other for public attention, and said he planned to change the Starship's name to Auckland Children's Hospital, because "that's what it actually does".

He said part of the problem he faced was "the preposterous reliance on brands. Brands are wonderful for fast-moving consumer goods, [but] this is an over-subscribed taxpayer funded service."

Starship, he said, "is so well marketed that there are kids in New Zealand thinking they're missing out on something by not being there.

"It's a place of pain and agony and sadness which children would be well advised to keep well away from."



At the time I thought I was hearing a bit of over-exuberant shadow-boxing from a new chairman practising before his first bout with the hospital medical czars.

But three weeks later he was announcing his plans to rename Starship the "Auckland Sick Children's Hospital". His reasoning was as outlined to me a month before.

There was an instant outcry from patients, parents and the medical establishment. At the time I wrote a column wondering why Mr Brown would buy a fight over a non-issue like a name when he had so many more pressing issues to solve.

It all then disappeared from sight, presumably shelved in the "loony, not to be revisited" pigeon hole.

But not so. Mr Brown slipped the name change through last July's board meeting.

It was not done as a formal name change. Instead, a list was tabled of all the proposed departments and units of the new centralised Grafton-based Auckland City Hospital.

Starship was not there. Instead, there was a department named Children's Services. Also missing was National Women's and Green Lane.

There was no consultation and no one outside the board and presumably, administration staff, noticed the change until it was revealed in last Friday's Herald.

Now the chairman and board want us to believe they're amazed and sorry at the public outcry.

To wiggle themselves off this embarrassing hook, I guess they will try anything.

But if they're asking us to accept this excuse, then they're asking us to accept how out of touch they are with the public they're supposed to represent.

Like many others, I rubbished the Starship label when then adman Bob Harvey came up with it a decade ago. Like Mr Brown, the proponents saw the name as something that would attract little kids. Like him, they argued that words like "sick" and "hospital" would frighten kids off.

To me, both sides are deluded in thinking that kids are little consumers who can be persuaded in or out of hospital by a label.

I also thought calling a hospital Starship was daft and wouldn't fool kids for a moment. I was wrong.

It mightn't have fooled them, but what's wrong with a euphemism when you need one? And daft or not, it captured the imagination of those who fork out the sponsorship dollars.

Starship's success in this area is why Mr Brown is targeting it. He sees the cult of personality that has grown up around it, the Green Lane heart team and National Women's as injurious to the greater economic good of Auckland's overall public health system. He has a point.

I also support his, and the Government's, desire that more of the public health dollars go towards preventative and primary health services.

But I can't see how tilting at a Starship is going to help.