Canterbury General Practice teams stand with their hospital colleagues
As chairs of the three Primary Health Organisations representing all Canterbury general practices we fully support our
hospital colleagues’ position as outlined by Dr Alistair Humphrey in the Christchurch Press 19 July 2017.
We too are appalled at the underhand tactics and behaviours being used by politicians, policy makers and senior health
ministry officials to attack elected board members, senior management and clinicians of Canterbury DHB. Last week’s
sensationalist front page feature describing a treasury “briefing” represents a new low both in terms of content and
timing.
The extremely short interval of a few hours between the posting of the Official Information Act response on one of
treasury’s web pages and the published article appearing online on the media site "Stuff" raises questions of a
pre-posting tip off to the journalist from the highest level. We too remember and are reminded of the acrimonious events
leading up to the Stent report in the 1990s. Over the last 25 years in Canterbury we have organised general practice to
a degree that our ongoing innovation and integration with other parts of the health system and our partnerships with the
community puts Canterbury at the forefront not just of New Zealand, as recognised by multiple national awards, but of
the world.
These achievements, reflected as they are in many clear improvements in patient care, have occurred despite ongoing
erosion of national support and latterly by destructive behaviours from the centre. These behaviours driven not by what
is best for patient care but an apparent desire to stifle local autonomy and to break the unusual cohesion and shared
purpose of clinicians, managers and the Canterbury community we all serve.
We expect the same cohesion, organisation, shared purpose and focus on patient care from the government and the Ministry
of Health which sadly, and in stark contrast, seems to us and to many to have lost its way in fulfilling its leadership
role in the health system.
An immediate, independent, comprehensive and transparent review of Canterbury’s overall funding is necessary. One which
includes assessing the real cost of the unprecedented large scale natural disaster caused by the earthquakes, the major
rebuild and the application of the population based formula to the actual population statistics.
Echoing Disraeli’s immortalised words, “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The unhelpful
invective from the ill-informed treasury officials in their pre-budget briefing illustrates why such a review cannot be
left to government departments whose independence has to be questioned.
We believe it is totally unacceptable for the health of Cantabrians (and beyond as Christchurch is a tertiary referral
centre) to be held hostage to the whims of unsavoury party or personality politics by those in positions of influence.
Professor Les Toop
Chair Pegasus Health
Dr Lorna Martin
Chair Rural Canterbury PHO
Dr Angus Chambers
Chair Christchurch PHO