Public outrage brings back Starship name

By MATHEW DEARNALEY and REBECCA WALSH

Public outrage and stern Government warnings have forced Auckland health chiefs to back off their plan to dump the Starship name from the country's top children's hospital.

But a compromise announced yesterday by Auckland District Health Board's chastened chairman, Wayne Brown, to rename it the Starship Children's Department of Auckland City Hospital failed to placate either its staff or fundraising foundation.

"It's derisory, it's ludicrous - we are a complex, essentially self-contained organisation offering integral services for children from throughout New Zealand. We are more than a department," Starship clinical leader and oncologist Dr Scott Macfarlane said.

Starship Foundation chairman Bryan Mogridge, whose organisation raises about $3.5 million a year for the hospital, was "staggered" that the board had again decided on a name change without consultation.

"This just exposes the way decisions are made - once again, just no consultation, which is a tragedy," he said.

Actor and foundation trustee Lucy Lawless also expressed surprise at hearing of the amended name from the media rather than the board.

"I think the public, who feel a great amount of ownership over the hospital, have sent a message loud and clear - 'hands off, leave the name alone'."

Meanwhile, there is more trouble ahead for the board from staff of National Women's and Green Lane Hospitals, who are also starting rearguard actions against losing their distinctive names in the $450 million mega-hospital development to be based mainly at Grafton.

The board's partial backdown followed emergency discussions led by Mr Brown after a raft of politicians, including Prime Minister Helen Clark, weighed in.

Its initial intention, in a decision made in an open meeting nine months ago but publicised only last week - to the fury of parents and doctors - was to call it Auckland City Hospital Children's Services.

This produced a barrage of calls to radio talkback shows and indications by Government ministers that the board may have badly misjudged the mood of a community it has a legal obligation to consult.

Helen Clark said from Paris that the new title did not have the ring about it of Starship and she advised the board to "take a good, hard listen to what its community is saying".

Health Minister Annette King said in Wellington that while she would not issue a formal directive to abandon the name change, the board was obliged to listen to the community.

"And the strong message they are getting is that the community thinks the name Starship is suitable."

Auckland Minister Judith Tizard said she phoned some board members on Sunday to stress the Starship Foundation's valuable work.

The MP for Waitakere, Lynne Pillay, intended seeking a notice of motion in Parliament yesterday to urge the health board to back down but said she was pleased common sense had prevailed.

Former Auckland Area Health Board chairman Gary Taylor, who was sceptical of the name Starship in 1992, suggested the lack of consultation might open the way for a court challenge. Told later of the board's change of heart, he called it "a pretty good outcome" but believed there should still be public consultations before a decision became enshrined.

The Public Health and Disability Act requires a board to consult its "resident population" about any proposed change to its annual plan, and yesterday's amendment still has to be put to a vote at a properly constituted meeting.

Dr Macfarlane said clinicians had not been told officially of the initial decision, and the name change was a symptom of "what they are doing to Starship, which is to significantly dismantle it as a children's hospital".

This included the loss of the hospital's general manager and its radiology department to outside control, with other functions to follow.

"I was prepared to strive for a compromise between operational necessity and children's needs, but this is an issue on which I am not compromising," he said.

"We have got to a point where further integration of Starship children's hospital will have an impact on the services we provide."

He hoped the public would not lose interest in the cause following the partial backdown on the name.

But Mr Taylor said that he could understand a desire by the health board to move away from an exclusive focus on hospital services, which tended to drain donated funds away from community-based healthcare.

Mr Brown said his board was amazed by the strength of community feeling on Starship's name, and said it "certainly didn't intend to cause any upset".

- Additional reporting: Francesca Mold