Job cuts are not yet on the cards for a cash-strapped Wairarapa District Health Board, now battling to haul itself out of a projected end-of-year $2 million deficit.
Board chairman Bob Francis said the DHB is not looking at cutting staff, although he did not want to rule out the idea.
He was among 21 chairs who agreed at a meeting in Wellington this week that DHBs must tighten their belts in response to worsening Government forecasts.
Wairarapa DHB is among 15 operating in deficit, but is not one of the seven "at risk" DHBs that require remedial action to justify continued Crown Health Funding Agency funding.
Mr Francis said the chairs were told they were working in a "very serious" economic climate that was putting significant pressure on all DHBs, which collectively were operating at a $180 million deficit.
"However it was noted that the health sector is being treated very well by the Government and there has been good attempts to protect us from cuts."
He said Wairarapa DHB was challenged not only by the situation of the current financial year, which ends June 30, but by the test of correcting it in the 2009/2010 year.
"Clearly, the senior management has to work through initiatives in order to bring us back into line."
The issue had been taken heavily into account during planning for the next District Annual Plan expected to be out in May.
"We have been going through expenditure line-by-line and looking at every cost to see where we can make savings. We don't want to reduce productivity but increase it, so we can continue to perform so well."
That includes increasing the number of elective surgeries, he said. Meanwhile, the DHB had been challenging staffers to come up with ways to save money.
It had identified seven areas of "waste", including waiting times, errors that required re-work, over-production, over-processing, wasted movement of material, staff and patients, excessive transport and excess inventory.
Wairarapa Public Health staff had also asked the DHB to look again at having "loan bikes" available for staff to take to local off-site meetings.
Peter Glensor, chairman of the DHB chairs, said this week's briefings confirmed DHBs would soon be under even greater pressure to make significant savings and increase value for money over the next three to five years.
"It was especially powerful to get a clear sense of the economic environment in which we will be operating for some time yet."
The chairs endorsed a new set of national collective priorities which deliver on the challenges facing health, including the Government's priorities.
Hospital jobs safe for now
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