New health boss to help transform care services

The one-time nurse who went on to help transform the way treatment is provided at Wellington Hospital is now primed to push Wairarapa's own clinical services makeover.
Kieran McCann recently started as general manager of Wairarapa District Health Board's new clinical services structure in a role created as part of the DHB's administration overhaul.
Mr McCann will now oversee a broad area of revamped DHB services including patient, mental health, peri-operative, elective and community, and will report alongside several other top-ranking staff to chief executive Tracey Adamson.
''Wairarapa is a great example of a region delivering the sort of health care the government is striving for,'' he said.
''The foundation work is done.''
Mr McCann, who helped develop the clinical design for Capital and Coast District Health Board ahead of the opening of the new Wellington Hospital last March, said there was ''great community involvement'' and excellent interaction between primary and secondary care providers in Wairarapa's health sector.
Mr McCann is no stranger to Wairarapa, having lived in Greytown with his partner and young daughter for the past four years.
He welcomed the change from daily commutes to Wellington, where for the past 18 months he had worked as the Ministry of Health's elective services manager.
There he oversaw the administration of $198 million of additional electives funding, monitored electives activity and policy and as the champion provided ministerial advice.
As an expat of historically unsettled Northern Ireland _ County Tyrone to be precise _ Mr McCann quipped he knew a ''thing or two about conflict resolution''.
When he first left Ireland for London he was enrolled in a fine arts degree but changed direction, as chance would have it, after meeting some persuasive nurses at a student party.
His health career officially began in 1989 when he started training as a nurse in Guys Hospital London.
He left a decade later for a six-month holiday in New Zealand, and loved it so much he stayed.
At Auckland Hospital he held the position of charge nurse manager and later, as a unit manager, oversaw multiple specialties including trauma, vascular, transplants, orthopaedics and urology. Further down the track, he managed surgical services at Starship Hospital.
In Auckland he met a girl from Taihape who was keen to move away from the city, so they settled in Greytown and Mr McCann began his years at Capital and Coast _ first as divisional manager of medicine and cancer services and later as service redesign manager for the new hospital.
He admitted the opportunity to now shape health services within his own community carried ''a lot of impetus and responsibility''.
''The community is well informed, we deliver health services with passion and patients get a really good deal here. Wairarapa is small enough to be successful and large enough to be meaningful.''