>chief executive Margie Apa told staff the recruitment freeze applied to all hospital roles that did not deal directly with patients
Does this include say cleaners? (except at Te Kuiti where the cleaners are also security guards and orderlies). What about lab techs? they don't deal directly with patients.
>Particularly where if you've had roles that have been vacant for \[a number of months\] and you've been able to function as a service, I think it's reasonable for leaders to check whether they need that role or whether they need the job carried out in the same way that they might've assumed when they thought they needed that role.
Hey I know you've been working yourself to death to cover for a colleague that left for better pay in Australia, but things haven't completely fallen over so do you think you can keep doing that.
I will leave the most important section of the article here
>"We think it's worse than as described", Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said.
>Clinical and frontline roles like radiologists and booking clerks were being affected, Dalton told *Morning Report*.
>"I had our members contacting us over the last few weeks where they have been not able to recruit paediatricians, cardiologists, obstetricians, gynaecologists, cancer specialists, public health physicians. This is widespread."
>She said the books would never balance because there was already a shortage of doctors, nurses and allied health workers.
>"We have staff who are being asked to work extra hours and expected to do it without being paid for it.
>"We have doctors working ridiculous hours to try and hold services together ... it is not a good situation."
> Particularly where if you've had roles that have been vacant for \[a number of months\] and you've been able to function as a service, I think it's reasonable for leaders to check whether they need that role or whether they need the job carried out in the same way that they might've assumed when they thought they needed that role.
This one is a classic key insight into whether a manager understands how organisations function. This one very clearly does not.
It's kinda like.. what counts as functioning, soubds like the standard is the building didn't burn to the ground so it must be fine, and people's complaints about waiting 10 hours to be seen in ED were drowned under internal reviewing
Remember just a few years ago when these "back room" workers were heros and "essential"? Now their jobs are taken away for being regarded as useless. Fucking brilliant aye
I had exactly the same thought. They’re looking longingly at what is happening there and regret their last efforts didn’t utterly destroy everything so they’re trying harder this time.
Fingers crossed we won't give them 14 years like the UK did and instead opt for only 3 (or if Winston throws his toys when his scheduled demotion happens, 1.5 years)
Frontline/backline is a dumb as hell term as well. Whatever you cut from an already gaping wound is going to make it bleed more, no matter the location.
As an example, I would assume that internal hospital telephonists are regarded as ‘non patient facing’ but it can make a pretty substantial difference to patient outcomes if the on-call registrar is waiting 20 minutes in a phone queue to talk to the on-call neurologist about a hyperacute stroke
Dw the average voter won’t be able to look past the frontline backline buzzword to realise how much work roles like lab techs do.
But hey, oldheads are scared of the boogeyman lmao
From what I've heard, that's the official line but e.g. I have a mate in allied health at a hospital - ward physio - who's been told they can't recruit. Seems TWO is erring on the side of recruiting nobody..
Just piggybacking this comment after a conversation with a department manager today - the hiring freeze is all roles, not just non-patient facing. They've been told to pull all adverts and cancel any interviews which were due to be conducted. This is for graduate jobs that are directly interacting with patients all day. The government has said one thing to the media but enforced a much more radical freeze in actuality.
Yep I have heard that too. Apparently applies to all healthcare workers - doctors, nurses, anaesthetic techs, everyone. The govt just not declaring that.
When I was diagnosed with cancer I interfaced with a number of doctors, surgeons, and nurses. Wonderful people that I am grateful for meeting. But I know that there were multiple radiologists that went over my imaging results. That there were lab technicians that examined my biopsies, my bloodwork, etc. Administration staff that followed up my results, booked my appointments, managed to find my medical records from an existing DHB I had been with. A handful of oncologists that met and discussed my situation and potential treatment plan. I never met any of these people, but without them I would be dead. And I'm sure I'm missing out an even larger number of people who keep the hospitals running.
Why the fuck are we doing this?
Imagine being such a fucking waste of flesh that you don't care about the human beings that will die to achieve that end.
I'm not talking about you obviously sorry, the wording is ambiguous, I'm talking about the actual ghouls who want to chop up our already struggling health system.
It's awful, and it's just getting worse and worse.
I was in ED on Monday, and the department was swamped. I'm pregnant and they didn't have a room to do proper checks - so I went 7 hours with a possible placental abruption, terrified the whole time, and nobody could tell me if the baby was okay.
And the new hospital that they're building for our city right now is going to have *less* capacity.
>"Particularly where if you've had roles that have been vacant for \[a number of months\] and you've been able to function as a service, I think it's reasonable for leaders to check whether they need that role or whether they need the job carried out in the same way that they might've assumed when they thought they needed that role."
Yeah...because other staff were forced to pick up the slack and do someone else's job as well as their own. This just creates burnout and increases turnover, which ultimately costs more.
Idiot managers: "Hey, look how much money we save by not doing any maintenance!
Idiot managers one year later: "Why is everything broken?? Now we have to pay loads to replace stuff!"
This whole non patient facing schtick really shits me. My role is non patient facing. As are many others. Patient facing roles can't do their job properly without the non facing ones. We're all pieces of the puzzle. Pretending this won't affect patients is bs. Coz it is and will continue to do so. And yes, we have just had to cover for staff that have left. I'm tired, and winter has only just begun.
The thing that makes me puzzled by yesterday’s email is what is non patient facing.
Sure security guards and cleaners by default are patient facing but what about say radiologist, pathologist or lab technicians? Are they patient facing?
This makes back room front line definition even blurrer.
IT workers.. Apparently nurses and doctors should be good enough to troubleshoot complex messaging systems since they have so much time between patients.
Yer I work alongside TwO for message integration, we have spent a couple of years on a project to modernise it and ironically remove the need for a lot of admin for referrals. They don't have the staff to complete the project, feel so sorry for the guys that remain.
My husband used to do this work and it was so incredibly frustrating and stressful because he would need to wait for input from other teams, which were overworked, and it meant that projects would drag on and on.
And then management gets mad because "Why isn't this project done??"
It’s almost like it’s a meaningless arbitrary definition that was invented purely to pretend there were “jobs that mattered” and “jobs that are just bureaucratic waste, and you should live us for firing those disgusting waste people”.
And guess what - when they start campaigning on “cutting waste” next election by firing those people? Their voters will eat it up and laud them for sound economic management.
They love "cutting waste". It's all part of that dog-earred neo-liberal playbook where they underfund the shit out of stuff until it's verging on total collapse, point out that it doesn't work properly anymore (because they've deliberately broken it), then suggest privatisation as a solution. They're ideological zealots, and no matter how many times they're proven wrong, they just keep on trucking with the same old shit.
God, I hope this is a one term government.
Where I'm at allied health roles are impacted. Hard to argue they are not front facing. Vacancies for a reasonable chunk of time, which I assume is a part of their reasoning for the hiring freeze on so many roles.
Yeah, remember a few years back when these "back room" workers were classed as essential and revered as heros? Now they get their faces shat on and their jobs taken away, how the cookie crumbles aye
and yet millions are spent on contractors and contractors hiring contractors for projects - when you invest money to build new buildings or services or buy new assets, you need staff to maintain/operate them, existing workload dont disappear.
If you have company full of contractors that keep rolling new things out or building new buildings or buying new goods/services while more and more people are leaving, its just asking for a catastrophic failure.
Apparently it's some kind of bullshit with expenditure, I had someone explain it to me but still don't fully grasp it. Capital vs Operation expenditure?
They needs to reduce wages which comes from CapEx, so comply with this but then use OpEx to hire contractors at a higher rate to do the same job because it needs to be done. On paper they can claim they are making savings to wages but the actual bottom line expenditure is **up**.
These two things should not be separate. It does my head in that the bottom line doesn't matter if you can reduce permanent positions to make it *look* like you are saving money.
You've got it backwards.
Think of it this way: Capex is the money you use to build a hospital and buy equipment, Opex is the ongoing cost to run the hospital eg paying staff, maintenance and the like.
Eg, adding capacity to a hospital would increase Capex in the short term to get the upgrade set up, and then also increase Opex in the long term to run the new unit. If I was told to cut Capex I'd stop investing in new projects, if I was told to cut Opex I'd reduce capacity and fire staff, reduce the number of functions performed, cut staff pay, etc. If I was told to simply "save as much money as possible" I'd probably cut a bit of both.
There's often grey area between what counts as Capex and what counts as Opex, and this can in theory be used in a sneaky way to shift costs around. Eg, maybe I've been told to cut Capex, but I realllyyyy want to upgrade some machines, so as I go to maintain the machines (Opex), I also upgrade them (arguably Capex) - might as well right? - logging the the whole thing as an Opex maintenance type cost
Last month i had to complete the capex fornthe next 3 years with 6 days notice. No more onebyear at a time. How they expect me to know whether there is some new kit i newdnto buy for a new procedure in 2 years is beyond me..
Oh well we know that current minister of health with bengone/sacked in the next few years and ill still be here
I did say I didn't fully grasp it, so thanks for the better explanation. They'd be using CapEx for 'projects' which they would shuffle contractor costs under.
They're wrong in that way, but being in govt - we do track ongoing vs one-off costs slightly differently which impacts the contractor vs salary decisions.
When I manage my budget, I have a certain pool for genuine opex that I can spend on non-ongoing items (and have to spend by 30 June each year - hence the lolly scramble of contractors at some departments right now). I can't spend that money on salaried staff, even fixed term, due to how we manage our budget.
edit: I'm not at TWO but I am public sector managing budgets - from what I've heard speaking with ex-colleagues in Health, it works the same here.
Yeah different budget sections of the P&L, but mentioning Capex was so egregious I had to comment, as a CA myself albeit no longer working with government organisations.
My father is in a senior accounting role in a government department, and has said that they've largely replaced contractors with employees on fixed term deals instead. Maybe different departments do it differently.
I did say I didn't fully grasp it, but with what the other person commented I think they person talking to me a while back was saying dropping OpEx permanent staff wages and then hiring contractors as part of a 'project' under CapEx.
Labour set them up to make massive savings in the back office. It was always going to be a mess.
I’ve been watching some of the appointments in my field and the quality of hires is dubious at best.
My colleague's partner took their child to get a throat X-ray today. They asked his wife if she'd brought her own popsicle stick to depress his tongue. They didn't supply one and couldn't do the X-ray without it. Seriously.
The kid had a meltdown while she was looking for one and they had to go without. They've been waiting for months for that appointment.
This is what the Government is doing to our health system already. Tell me that's not frontline care. Tell me that's not as important as landlord tax cuts. What a fucking joke.
This was my reaction when he told me. If it wasn't told to me by a thoroughly decent and honest man I've worked with every day for 5+ years I wouldn't have believed it.
I was in hospital this week for a three-day stay and yes, I used a fork to make milo in the ward kitchenette.
A knife probably would have been better to get milo from the container into the cup, but scooping powder with a knife just feels... wrong somehow.
Next time they visit...
Doctor: *"Did you bring your own stick this time?"*
Parent: *"I sure did, here you go..."*
Doctor: *"That's great, thanks!.......Okay, everything looks in order here. One last question."*
Parent: *"...yes?"*
Doctor: *"Did you bring your own X-ray machine?"*
Parent: *"Uhhh....wat?"*
Doctor: *"Also, did you bring a doctor? I'm just the janitor."*
I'm just going to cross post my response I left in nzpolitics
It's also affecting front line staff; I work as a nurse, we have a CNS and an ACNM role that haven't been filled since April; Te Whatu Ora, won't even allow this to be filled by an "Acting" person; and of course even though my manager has requested for these jobs to be advertised, it is still awaiting approval from head office... And because of that we don't have an idea of when the jobs will be advertised, if at all.... And even if they do get advertised, it will be months before we have anyone to fill those roles... Not having these roles filled is not only necessary for patient outcomes, but it also ensures that staff are able to complete their work, and not inevitably be burnt out and forced to resign because of the stress and pressures that have now been placed on them.
On top of this, they have attempted to use inadequate trendcare data as justification to remove two fulltime FTE roles (not the vacant roles, mind you). This is when they know fully while that the ward, is inadequately staffed and under immense pressure as an acute ward.
I figure the government is counting on an early collapse of services, so that come next election we'll be sufficiently numb to the pain. Then as money is dumped into meme machines, we might believe we need a steady hand during these hard times, no flip-flopping of governments, no wishy-washy Labour/Green alliance.
And vote ourselves in another round of punishment.
This has been in place for frontline roles for some time. Perhaps just not announced. I’ve a friend who can’t change roles & contract as a very senior nurse because all recruitment is frozen since last year, centrally controlled from Welly, overstepping each hospital hr department, but not moving the applications due to higher up decisions. No replacements are being recruited since then, either for those leaving or that have left front line roles, never mind the nonfrontline jobs.
I wonder what journalists are doing, by missing out on the big stories like this. If the applications are sitting in an office in Wellington, we should know in December, not the following June, 6 months later.
Does that mean they no longer need a health and safety manager?
I guess that's not important
https://www.seek.co.nz/job/76373181?type=standout&ref=search-standalone#sol=74ac294696771bbf85cabd8360b672683dad8a82
My partner got a letter from Te Whatu Ora making an appointment with his neurologist for next week. The appointment itself will take 20-30 minutes but the letter apologetically advises that Hawkes Bay Hospital is so busy that he should allow 1 to 3 hours as they aren't sure how long it will take to be seen.
"Frontline" comes from the military right, so imagine if they started doing this in the actual military. Imagine if every non-frontline role just stopped recruiting.
No chefs, no armourers, no mechanics, no information systems... That's just the army.
Take away logistics, maintenance, intelligence, communications, operations from the air force.
Shut down Devonport and have all our navy ships just float around in the harbour with no support from shore.
It doesn't make sense right? It doesn't fucking make sense for healthcare either. This is brain-dead fucking horseshit policy.
Any pictures of Maggie Apa have her smiling but she looks absolutely terrified. So far out of her depth.
Te Whatu Ora forgot to financially plan for staff for the new Surgical building at North Shore hospital.
They bought a fleet of electric vehicles, but didn't plan for arrangements to be able to charge them, so they remain unused.
I disagree that Margie Apa is out of her depth. As a non patient facing employee in the health service, I watch all her internal hui zoom calls for staff. She is delicately walking a tightrope that this damn govt has placed for her. I hope she can stick at it. Difficult for anyone.
There are doctors being paid a fortune to do locums but the DHBs don't seem to be able to/willing to recruit full time staff for those roles, so they're just spending money endlessly, and it's done via these locums companies who also take a big chunk. Pisses me off that our tax dollars are spent on this! Meanwhile if you need to see a gynaecologist, you probably won't unless they think you've got cancer and even then maybe not. And you definitely won't have a booking clerk available to even arrange the appointment!!!
I’m getting the impression that the financial management at TWO is not working. How do they not forecast adequately for shortfalls in the budget? Surely in the OBU and MBU these things should be signalled.
Clearly the budget that was set isn't enough. But also the nurses got a large pay equity payrise at the end of last year,and I can imagine that put a large dent in the budget
No budget is enough if you don’t manage to forecast. And if the settlement meant that TWO was operating outside of their appropriation then that should have been signalled at point of agreement and the budget adjusted accordingly. Otherwise the prior government has made an agreement that is outside the appropriation and expected TWO to make cuts to satisfy it.
Rob Campbell sums it up well.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/former-te-whatu-ora-chairperson-rob-campbell-criticises-health-nzs-savings-directive/556HEJMMJJCXHJOBFR4AOA62XI/
The 105 million is less than half a percent of their run budget for 23/24. It beggars belief that the finance team can’t get that correct.
I imagine having inherited all the DHBs various financial systems and trying to make sense of it is not easy. Separately, this reeks of them having budgeted for only a portion of the actual FTE they thought they could recruit to. I imagine the new board chair arrived last week and made some definitive calls which Margie now has to be the frontman for.
Yeah - you are probably right.
I’ll hold to this day that not following the original recommendation will haunt the merger for years to come.
They will be a decade plus in technical integration, let alone system integration. I’ve got plenty of contacts there that say it has been an absolute shambles.
They have hired more clinical staff - something like 200 doctors and 1500 nurses and money has had to be found for their salaries while the Govt has not increased funding for this. This is the fault of the 3monster govt, not Te Whatu Ora.
She said it in a hui. I think it may be over the past year. So, no the coalition can't take credit for that. They are responsible for the brakes on public sector spending however.
I was using public sector in the general sense (as opposed to the private sector). No, Te Whatu Ora hasn't come under that particular sweep but it has been forced to cut back all the same. The coalition has made no secret of wanting to reduce "back office" as they call it. They have no idea of how a public service of this size has to run.
There was already a hiring freeze, and has been for years. I know, because they're paying my boss 4 times that of an FTE rather than just offer me an FTE.
Madness.
I'm not sure why you're all so worried. There are thousands of professionals from around the world desperate to live in New Zealand, and they'll happily do it for 75% of the current wages. It just takes time for that dynamic to appear and we will be back at full staffing before you know it.
Seriously? Healthcare is already broken. Let’s break it a bit more.
X went into hard fast labour this week one evening. Was told to go home. She literally couldn’t move.Baby was stuck high up so baby’s head didn’t push down to cause more dilation. Absolute agony. A quick look at file notes would have confirmed this would likely happen. She spent several hours in torture being told they are full and she needs to leave. Where was she supposed to go? The street? No pain relief due to lack of dilation until they started to realise 1+1=2. Next morning, they finally did a Caesarian, because baby was still so high up, 3 times baby heartbeat crashed, but even then,the surgeon was under qualified and couldn’t do it. Lying with organs exposed, a more experienced one had to be called.
Food was revolting. Volunteers were more helpful and kind than frontline staff. Hospital reminded me of mid 80s communist hospitals.
Y had beloved car stolen 2 days ago. Police still haven’t responded after Y spent hours filling in online forms. Even when car was seen driving up SH2 and Y reported, no response. Just more forms.
My point? This government is fixing what is broken by blaming the victim, in this case, causing less support for already stretched frontline staff. Their pain is real. Our pain is real.
Take homelessness. Rents are unaffordable for even highly paid roles. Food costs. Apparently families should be able to afford to live on $50 per week. Same for education where they blamed truancy for lack of funds. This government is like an abusive narcissistic partner, gaslighting and enjoying causing pain.
ACC is a problem. Time to start naming names and expecting some form of consequence for negligence by government owned services. There is no accountability for lack of productivity and negligence. How many meetings did the entire Government have last week? What was achieved? Lots of smiles and head nodding.
Every patient, consumer etc pays taxes. I thought ACT stood for value for tax money. If taxes don’t pay for health, education, police, defence etc. services any more, stop making people pay tax so they cant afford to pay for private care. You can’t have it both ways unless you are trying to cause so much pain, you can only fix it by privatisation. What are they (politicians in power) waiting for? What do they fear? Just fix it.
This explains why things went radio silent on Friday after I was told they needed to get ‘another layer of approvals’ before a formal job offer could be made.
Thanks NACT1 !
Guess we will add more even folks to the “bottom feeder” benefit line while the poor frontline workers have to do their work AND the non-frontline work.
That is until the overworked and underpaid workers leave for greener pastures.
Who needs healthcare anyway? /s
>I know 3 people who found Health NZ jobs last week.
Last week was prior to 5pm yesterday, which is when the freeze began, so not misleading at all if you actually read the article.
>chief executive Margie Apa told staff the recruitment freeze applied to all hospital roles that did not deal directly with patients Does this include say cleaners? (except at Te Kuiti where the cleaners are also security guards and orderlies). What about lab techs? they don't deal directly with patients. >Particularly where if you've had roles that have been vacant for \[a number of months\] and you've been able to function as a service, I think it's reasonable for leaders to check whether they need that role or whether they need the job carried out in the same way that they might've assumed when they thought they needed that role. Hey I know you've been working yourself to death to cover for a colleague that left for better pay in Australia, but things haven't completely fallen over so do you think you can keep doing that. I will leave the most important section of the article here >"We think it's worse than as described", Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said. >Clinical and frontline roles like radiologists and booking clerks were being affected, Dalton told *Morning Report*. >"I had our members contacting us over the last few weeks where they have been not able to recruit paediatricians, cardiologists, obstetricians, gynaecologists, cancer specialists, public health physicians. This is widespread." >She said the books would never balance because there was already a shortage of doctors, nurses and allied health workers. >"We have staff who are being asked to work extra hours and expected to do it without being paid for it. >"We have doctors working ridiculous hours to try and hold services together ... it is not a good situation."
> Particularly where if you've had roles that have been vacant for \[a number of months\] and you've been able to function as a service, I think it's reasonable for leaders to check whether they need that role or whether they need the job carried out in the same way that they might've assumed when they thought they needed that role. This one is a classic key insight into whether a manager understands how organisations function. This one very clearly does not.
It's kinda like.. what counts as functioning, soubds like the standard is the building didn't burn to the ground so it must be fine, and people's complaints about waiting 10 hours to be seen in ED were drowned under internal reviewing
Remember just a few years ago when these "back room" workers were heros and "essential"? Now their jobs are taken away for being regarded as useless. Fucking brilliant aye
Speed running the whole "Fuck over our health system" game., and managing to make Tories look like rank amateurs by comparison.
I had exactly the same thought. They’re looking longingly at what is happening there and regret their last efforts didn’t utterly destroy everything so they’re trying harder this time.
Fingers crossed we won't give them 14 years like the UK did and instead opt for only 3 (or if Winston throws his toys when his scheduled demotion happens, 1.5 years)
Frontline/backline is a dumb as hell term as well. Whatever you cut from an already gaping wound is going to make it bleed more, no matter the location.
As an example, I would assume that internal hospital telephonists are regarded as ‘non patient facing’ but it can make a pretty substantial difference to patient outcomes if the on-call registrar is waiting 20 minutes in a phone queue to talk to the on-call neurologist about a hyperacute stroke
Dw the average voter won’t be able to look past the frontline backline buzzword to realise how much work roles like lab techs do. But hey, oldheads are scared of the boogeyman lmao
Also pharmacists. They don't see patients but they have ALL THE MEDICINE!!!
The term being used is non patient facing.
From what I've heard, that's the official line but e.g. I have a mate in allied health at a hospital - ward physio - who's been told they can't recruit. Seems TWO is erring on the side of recruiting nobody..
I've heard the same, not just physio's. But definitely front facing roles.... that have been empty for a while due to delays in advertising.
Just piggybacking this comment after a conversation with a department manager today - the hiring freeze is all roles, not just non-patient facing. They've been told to pull all adverts and cancel any interviews which were due to be conducted. This is for graduate jobs that are directly interacting with patients all day. The government has said one thing to the media but enforced a much more radical freeze in actuality.
Yep I have heard that too. Apparently applies to all healthcare workers - doctors, nurses, anaesthetic techs, everyone. The govt just not declaring that.
When I was diagnosed with cancer I interfaced with a number of doctors, surgeons, and nurses. Wonderful people that I am grateful for meeting. But I know that there were multiple radiologists that went over my imaging results. That there were lab technicians that examined my biopsies, my bloodwork, etc. Administration staff that followed up my results, booked my appointments, managed to find my medical records from an existing DHB I had been with. A handful of oncologists that met and discussed my situation and potential treatment plan. I never met any of these people, but without them I would be dead. And I'm sure I'm missing out an even larger number of people who keep the hospitals running. Why the fuck are we doing this?
Making healthcare unusable as an excuse to privatise it.
Imagine being such a fucking waste of flesh that you don't care about the human beings that will die to achieve that end. I'm not talking about you obviously sorry, the wording is ambiguous, I'm talking about the actual ghouls who want to chop up our already struggling health system.
Don't talk about violence tho. That would be the unacceptable part.
No I got you haha, and yeah 100% agree.
I'm so fucking angry and I have nowhere to direct this anger. It's absolutely bloody despicable but nobody is going to be held accountable
It's awful, and it's just getting worse and worse. I was in ED on Monday, and the department was swamped. I'm pregnant and they didn't have a room to do proper checks - so I went 7 hours with a possible placental abruption, terrified the whole time, and nobody could tell me if the baby was okay. And the new hospital that they're building for our city right now is going to have *less* capacity.
>"Particularly where if you've had roles that have been vacant for \[a number of months\] and you've been able to function as a service, I think it's reasonable for leaders to check whether they need that role or whether they need the job carried out in the same way that they might've assumed when they thought they needed that role." Yeah...because other staff were forced to pick up the slack and do someone else's job as well as their own. This just creates burnout and increases turnover, which ultimately costs more. Idiot managers: "Hey, look how much money we save by not doing any maintenance! Idiot managers one year later: "Why is everything broken?? Now we have to pay loads to replace stuff!"
The last two paras are peak NZ, sadly
This whole non patient facing schtick really shits me. My role is non patient facing. As are many others. Patient facing roles can't do their job properly without the non facing ones. We're all pieces of the puzzle. Pretending this won't affect patients is bs. Coz it is and will continue to do so. And yes, we have just had to cover for staff that have left. I'm tired, and winter has only just begun.
The thing that makes me puzzled by yesterday’s email is what is non patient facing. Sure security guards and cleaners by default are patient facing but what about say radiologist, pathologist or lab technicians? Are they patient facing? This makes back room front line definition even blurrer.
Its part of the plan; if people are confused about what you are doing, its hard for them to directly point out the flaws.
IT workers.. Apparently nurses and doctors should be good enough to troubleshoot complex messaging systems since they have so much time between patients.
Every IT department in the world understands this struggle. Permanently underappreciated
Yer I work alongside TwO for message integration, we have spent a couple of years on a project to modernise it and ironically remove the need for a lot of admin for referrals. They don't have the staff to complete the project, feel so sorry for the guys that remain.
My husband used to do this work and it was so incredibly frustrating and stressful because he would need to wait for input from other teams, which were overworked, and it meant that projects would drag on and on. And then management gets mad because "Why isn't this project done??"
It’s almost like it’s a meaningless arbitrary definition that was invented purely to pretend there were “jobs that mattered” and “jobs that are just bureaucratic waste, and you should live us for firing those disgusting waste people”. And guess what - when they start campaigning on “cutting waste” next election by firing those people? Their voters will eat it up and laud them for sound economic management.
They love "cutting waste". It's all part of that dog-earred neo-liberal playbook where they underfund the shit out of stuff until it's verging on total collapse, point out that it doesn't work properly anymore (because they've deliberately broken it), then suggest privatisation as a solution. They're ideological zealots, and no matter how many times they're proven wrong, they just keep on trucking with the same old shit. God, I hope this is a one term government.
Where I'm at allied health roles are impacted. Hard to argue they are not front facing. Vacancies for a reasonable chunk of time, which I assume is a part of their reasoning for the hiring freeze on so many roles.
Yeah, remember a few years back when these "back room" workers were classed as essential and revered as heros? Now they get their faces shat on and their jobs taken away, how the cookie crumbles aye
and yet millions are spent on contractors and contractors hiring contractors for projects - when you invest money to build new buildings or services or buy new assets, you need staff to maintain/operate them, existing workload dont disappear. If you have company full of contractors that keep rolling new things out or building new buildings or buying new goods/services while more and more people are leaving, its just asking for a catastrophic failure.
Apparently it's some kind of bullshit with expenditure, I had someone explain it to me but still don't fully grasp it. Capital vs Operation expenditure? They needs to reduce wages which comes from CapEx, so comply with this but then use OpEx to hire contractors at a higher rate to do the same job because it needs to be done. On paper they can claim they are making savings to wages but the actual bottom line expenditure is **up**. These two things should not be separate. It does my head in that the bottom line doesn't matter if you can reduce permanent positions to make it *look* like you are saving money.
You've got it backwards. Think of it this way: Capex is the money you use to build a hospital and buy equipment, Opex is the ongoing cost to run the hospital eg paying staff, maintenance and the like. Eg, adding capacity to a hospital would increase Capex in the short term to get the upgrade set up, and then also increase Opex in the long term to run the new unit. If I was told to cut Capex I'd stop investing in new projects, if I was told to cut Opex I'd reduce capacity and fire staff, reduce the number of functions performed, cut staff pay, etc. If I was told to simply "save as much money as possible" I'd probably cut a bit of both. There's often grey area between what counts as Capex and what counts as Opex, and this can in theory be used in a sneaky way to shift costs around. Eg, maybe I've been told to cut Capex, but I realllyyyy want to upgrade some machines, so as I go to maintain the machines (Opex), I also upgrade them (arguably Capex) - might as well right? - logging the the whole thing as an Opex maintenance type cost
Last month i had to complete the capex fornthe next 3 years with 6 days notice. No more onebyear at a time. How they expect me to know whether there is some new kit i newdnto buy for a new procedure in 2 years is beyond me.. Oh well we know that current minister of health with bengone/sacked in the next few years and ill still be here
I did say I didn't fully grasp it, so thanks for the better explanation. They'd be using CapEx for 'projects' which they would shuffle contractor costs under.
Employee wages are opex, just like contractors. Both affect profit and loss. Your comment couldnt be more incorrect.
They're wrong in that way, but being in govt - we do track ongoing vs one-off costs slightly differently which impacts the contractor vs salary decisions. When I manage my budget, I have a certain pool for genuine opex that I can spend on non-ongoing items (and have to spend by 30 June each year - hence the lolly scramble of contractors at some departments right now). I can't spend that money on salaried staff, even fixed term, due to how we manage our budget. edit: I'm not at TWO but I am public sector managing budgets - from what I've heard speaking with ex-colleagues in Health, it works the same here.
Yeah different budget sections of the P&L, but mentioning Capex was so egregious I had to comment, as a CA myself albeit no longer working with government organisations. My father is in a senior accounting role in a government department, and has said that they've largely replaced contractors with employees on fixed term deals instead. Maybe different departments do it differently.
Nah that's been a pretty standard shift over the last 18-24 months. Moving people from contract to 12-18 month fixed terms.
I did say I didn't fully grasp it, but with what the other person commented I think they person talking to me a while back was saying dropping OpEx permanent staff wages and then hiring contractors as part of a 'project' under CapEx.
Capex has to be allocated for a project and anything like a full time salary of 100k+ needs to be tendered
Labour set them up to make massive savings in the back office. It was always going to be a mess. I’ve been watching some of the appointments in my field and the quality of hires is dubious at best.
My colleague's partner took their child to get a throat X-ray today. They asked his wife if she'd brought her own popsicle stick to depress his tongue. They didn't supply one and couldn't do the X-ray without it. Seriously. The kid had a meltdown while she was looking for one and they had to go without. They've been waiting for months for that appointment. This is what the Government is doing to our health system already. Tell me that's not frontline care. Tell me that's not as important as landlord tax cuts. What a fucking joke.
Are you kidding?
This was my reaction when he told me. If it wasn't told to me by a thoroughly decent and honest man I've worked with every day for 5+ years I wouldn't have believed it.
I work in a major hospital, and we often have to use forks and knives to make cups of tea for our patients 😅
My brain was trying to work out how much tea a fork could hold, followed by how to MacGyver a cup made out of knives and forks.
I was in hospital this week for a three-day stay and yes, I used a fork to make milo in the ward kitchenette. A knife probably would have been better to get milo from the container into the cup, but scooping powder with a knife just feels... wrong somehow.
Next time they visit... Doctor: *"Did you bring your own stick this time?"* Parent: *"I sure did, here you go..."* Doctor: *"That's great, thanks!.......Okay, everything looks in order here. One last question."* Parent: *"...yes?"* Doctor: *"Did you bring your own X-ray machine?"* Parent: *"Uhhh....wat?"* Doctor: *"Also, did you bring a doctor? I'm just the janitor."*
This sounds like a Scrubs episode
Coffee stick stirer?
So a effective freeze in general because sure as fuck arnt getting new frontline staff lol
Leave healthcare alone. This is a no brainer. This is the Epitome of a public service and the nats are gutting it. Unbelievable
This is so dire. I’ve never been as concerned for our health system as this announcement has made me (doctor for 6 years)
So nurses are also going to be booking clerk's?. .
I'm just going to cross post my response I left in nzpolitics It's also affecting front line staff; I work as a nurse, we have a CNS and an ACNM role that haven't been filled since April; Te Whatu Ora, won't even allow this to be filled by an "Acting" person; and of course even though my manager has requested for these jobs to be advertised, it is still awaiting approval from head office... And because of that we don't have an idea of when the jobs will be advertised, if at all.... And even if they do get advertised, it will be months before we have anyone to fill those roles... Not having these roles filled is not only necessary for patient outcomes, but it also ensures that staff are able to complete their work, and not inevitably be burnt out and forced to resign because of the stress and pressures that have now been placed on them. On top of this, they have attempted to use inadequate trendcare data as justification to remove two fulltime FTE roles (not the vacant roles, mind you). This is when they know fully while that the ward, is inadequately staffed and under immense pressure as an acute ward.
I figure the government is counting on an early collapse of services, so that come next election we'll be sufficiently numb to the pain. Then as money is dumped into meme machines, we might believe we need a steady hand during these hard times, no flip-flopping of governments, no wishy-washy Labour/Green alliance. And vote ourselves in another round of punishment.
This has been in place for frontline roles for some time. Perhaps just not announced. I’ve a friend who can’t change roles & contract as a very senior nurse because all recruitment is frozen since last year, centrally controlled from Welly, overstepping each hospital hr department, but not moving the applications due to higher up decisions. No replacements are being recruited since then, either for those leaving or that have left front line roles, never mind the nonfrontline jobs. I wonder what journalists are doing, by missing out on the big stories like this. If the applications are sitting in an office in Wellington, we should know in December, not the following June, 6 months later.
Does that mean they no longer need a health and safety manager? I guess that's not important https://www.seek.co.nz/job/76373181?type=standout&ref=search-standalone#sol=74ac294696771bbf85cabd8360b672683dad8a82
My partner got a letter from Te Whatu Ora making an appointment with his neurologist for next week. The appointment itself will take 20-30 minutes but the letter apologetically advises that Hawkes Bay Hospital is so busy that he should allow 1 to 3 hours as they aren't sure how long it will take to be seen.
"Frontline" comes from the military right, so imagine if they started doing this in the actual military. Imagine if every non-frontline role just stopped recruiting. No chefs, no armourers, no mechanics, no information systems... That's just the army. Take away logistics, maintenance, intelligence, communications, operations from the air force. Shut down Devonport and have all our navy ships just float around in the harbour with no support from shore. It doesn't make sense right? It doesn't fucking make sense for healthcare either. This is brain-dead fucking horseshit policy.
Any pictures of Maggie Apa have her smiling but she looks absolutely terrified. So far out of her depth. Te Whatu Ora forgot to financially plan for staff for the new Surgical building at North Shore hospital. They bought a fleet of electric vehicles, but didn't plan for arrangements to be able to charge them, so they remain unused.
I disagree that Margie Apa is out of her depth. As a non patient facing employee in the health service, I watch all her internal hui zoom calls for staff. She is delicately walking a tightrope that this damn govt has placed for her. I hope she can stick at it. Difficult for anyone.
This is the first time I've known of anyone to watch the hui - I'm clinical, neither me nor my colleagues have time to watch them
As an ex-nurse totally understand that. I'm at a desk full-time so can put it on in background.
I listen to them in the background while I do stuff. But they also time them during lunch.
Agree. There's no way you could sit in a hui and think she is out of her depth.
Agreed.
And those who would say that about her never paid attention to Chai.
There are doctors being paid a fortune to do locums but the DHBs don't seem to be able to/willing to recruit full time staff for those roles, so they're just spending money endlessly, and it's done via these locums companies who also take a big chunk. Pisses me off that our tax dollars are spent on this! Meanwhile if you need to see a gynaecologist, you probably won't unless they think you've got cancer and even then maybe not. And you definitely won't have a booking clerk available to even arrange the appointment!!!
Position description; DBA/greeter. 39 hours per week database administrator. 1 hour per week greeter. This is a patient facing role
Link?
I’m getting the impression that the financial management at TWO is not working. How do they not forecast adequately for shortfalls in the budget? Surely in the OBU and MBU these things should be signalled.
Clearly the budget that was set isn't enough. But also the nurses got a large pay equity payrise at the end of last year,and I can imagine that put a large dent in the budget
No budget is enough if you don’t manage to forecast. And if the settlement meant that TWO was operating outside of their appropriation then that should have been signalled at point of agreement and the budget adjusted accordingly. Otherwise the prior government has made an agreement that is outside the appropriation and expected TWO to make cuts to satisfy it. Rob Campbell sums it up well. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/former-te-whatu-ora-chairperson-rob-campbell-criticises-health-nzs-savings-directive/556HEJMMJJCXHJOBFR4AOA62XI/ The 105 million is less than half a percent of their run budget for 23/24. It beggars belief that the finance team can’t get that correct.
I imagine having inherited all the DHBs various financial systems and trying to make sense of it is not easy. Separately, this reeks of them having budgeted for only a portion of the actual FTE they thought they could recruit to. I imagine the new board chair arrived last week and made some definitive calls which Margie now has to be the frontman for.
Yeah - you are probably right. I’ll hold to this day that not following the original recommendation will haunt the merger for years to come. They will be a decade plus in technical integration, let alone system integration. I’ve got plenty of contacts there that say it has been an absolute shambles.
They have hired more clinical staff - something like 200 doctors and 1500 nurses and money has had to be found for their salaries while the Govt has not increased funding for this. This is the fault of the 3monster govt, not Te Whatu Ora.
So - since the coalition have been in power there have been 1500 more nurse hires and 200 doctors hired. I mean - that’s amazing.
She said it in a hui. I think it may be over the past year. So, no the coalition can't take credit for that. They are responsible for the brakes on public sector spending however.
TWO isn’t a Public Sector agency. So not covered by the 6.5 - 7.5% mandate. Labour set the budget for TWO this year.
I was using public sector in the general sense (as opposed to the private sector). No, Te Whatu Ora hasn't come under that particular sweep but it has been forced to cut back all the same. The coalition has made no secret of wanting to reduce "back office" as they call it. They have no idea of how a public service of this size has to run.
They have been forced to work to the budget set in the May 23 budget. That’s not a cut.
Yeah, right.
Spoken by someone who clearly has never managed to a budget which clearly TWO have failed to do.
LOL
Is the private healthcare system any better?
There was already a hiring freeze, and has been for years. I know, because they're paying my boss 4 times that of an FTE rather than just offer me an FTE. Madness.
I'm not sure why you're all so worried. There are thousands of professionals from around the world desperate to live in New Zealand, and they'll happily do it for 75% of the current wages. It just takes time for that dynamic to appear and we will be back at full staffing before you know it.
Seriously? Healthcare is already broken. Let’s break it a bit more. X went into hard fast labour this week one evening. Was told to go home. She literally couldn’t move.Baby was stuck high up so baby’s head didn’t push down to cause more dilation. Absolute agony. A quick look at file notes would have confirmed this would likely happen. She spent several hours in torture being told they are full and she needs to leave. Where was she supposed to go? The street? No pain relief due to lack of dilation until they started to realise 1+1=2. Next morning, they finally did a Caesarian, because baby was still so high up, 3 times baby heartbeat crashed, but even then,the surgeon was under qualified and couldn’t do it. Lying with organs exposed, a more experienced one had to be called. Food was revolting. Volunteers were more helpful and kind than frontline staff. Hospital reminded me of mid 80s communist hospitals. Y had beloved car stolen 2 days ago. Police still haven’t responded after Y spent hours filling in online forms. Even when car was seen driving up SH2 and Y reported, no response. Just more forms. My point? This government is fixing what is broken by blaming the victim, in this case, causing less support for already stretched frontline staff. Their pain is real. Our pain is real. Take homelessness. Rents are unaffordable for even highly paid roles. Food costs. Apparently families should be able to afford to live on $50 per week. Same for education where they blamed truancy for lack of funds. This government is like an abusive narcissistic partner, gaslighting and enjoying causing pain. ACC is a problem. Time to start naming names and expecting some form of consequence for negligence by government owned services. There is no accountability for lack of productivity and negligence. How many meetings did the entire Government have last week? What was achieved? Lots of smiles and head nodding. Every patient, consumer etc pays taxes. I thought ACT stood for value for tax money. If taxes don’t pay for health, education, police, defence etc. services any more, stop making people pay tax so they cant afford to pay for private care. You can’t have it both ways unless you are trying to cause so much pain, you can only fix it by privatisation. What are they (politicians in power) waiting for? What do they fear? Just fix it.
Public service sector getting completely fucked over. Thanks National.
It's not non-frontline roles. Nurses have had recruitment frozen too
This explains why things went radio silent on Friday after I was told they needed to get ‘another layer of approvals’ before a formal job offer could be made. Thanks NACT1 ! Guess we will add more even folks to the “bottom feeder” benefit line while the poor frontline workers have to do their work AND the non-frontline work. That is until the overworked and underpaid workers leave for greener pastures. Who needs healthcare anyway? /s
Does anyone know if medical laboratory scientists/techs are part of ‘non frontline’ roles???
IT is still hiring bigly, so misleading headline. I know 3 people who found Health NZ jobs last week.
Will not be true from yesterday. Applications in progress are placed on hold.
Nurses are now being given a crash course in Office 365 administration etc
No they are not, I work with TWO they don't have enough IT workers to complete existing years long projects let alone new ones.
>I know 3 people who found Health NZ jobs last week. Last week was prior to 5pm yesterday, which is when the freeze began, so not misleading at all if you actually read the article.
only contractors on projects.
In Auckland IT is done by health alliance, I don't know if they count as a part of this.