Starship board crashes in survey

By REBECCA WALSH health reporter

The Auckland District Health Board, which runs the national Starship children's hospital, has rated third from bottom in a survey comparing district health boards' services for young people.

The Counties Manukau and Waikato district health boards topped the Paediatric Society survey and won gold awards.

The Auckland board was the only one of 21 health boards that did not respond to the survey questionnaire.

It received a low ranking from the researchers based on information from other sources.

The questionnaire looked at how boards had implemented Government strategies for child health and what improvements they were planning.

It is the second year the survey has been done, and the first time the society has made the results public.

Society president Dr Nick Baker said that overall, district health boards had made good progress compared with last year but differences between boards were a concern.

Children's health in some regions would suffer in the long term if boards did not invest now.

"I don't think parents need to be worried about being in a district health board that scores a bronze, but boards that score a bronze need to look at how they are going to work to improve their organisation's child and youth health."

All boards had child abuse policies, he said, but some were still only in draft form.

Other issues were the shortage of well-trained and experienced nurses, and the number of children being cared for in adult wards.

Dr Baker attributed Counties Manukau's success to having a manager to oversee child and youth health, a commitment to development of KidzFirst and a strong focus on community services.

He did not believe the Auckland District Health Board, which received a bronze award based on information from specialist staff, provided the same attention to child health care.

He acknowledged the board would have done better if it had responded, but questioned by how much.

Auckland went from 14th out of 21 last year to 19th this year.

"Child health is an awful lot more than high-tech, expensive services for children in hospitals," Dr Baker said.

But the Auckland board's chief operating officer, Marek Stepniak, said no board did more for child health than Auckland.

Its main focus was on costly, difficult and expensive services, but it ran 230 clinics and was the first to set up a multi-agency centre to deal with child abuse.

It also monitored child health in the community.

Mr Stepniak said the board did not respond to the questionnaire because of the pressure it was under in preparing for the move to a new hospital site, but would take part next year.