Health NZ released the report soon after Minister Simeon Brown declared the “recklessly mismanaged” system under the previous government “changes today.”
[…] Deloitte, one of the ‘big four’ consultancies, did the 77-page report – released midday Friday – to find causes behind Health NZ/Te Whatu Ora’s sudden lurch last year from forecasting a half-billion-dollar surplus to a half-billion-dollar deficit that then grew to over $1 billion.
From a 500 million dollar surplus to a one billion dollar deficit in a single year. If Health New Zealand was a private company the people involved would be facing criminal charges.
It talks about “missing” plans, unheeded warnings and that “there was never buy-in” from operational teams to make savings even as the agency headed into a slow-motion financial car crash.
It intimated the country might have been better to have stuck with the previous 20 district health boards (DHBs).
[…] The decline in financial performance in 2023/24 was primarily due to Health NZ losing control of the critical levers that drive financial outcomes.
Health NZ did not have the right executive or board-level controls for such a huge agency, it said.
Monkeys in charge.
There was no plan in [Health NZ] during 2023/24 that demonstrated an understanding of what would need to be true to stay within the income for the outputs and services to be procured or provided by [Health NZ].
[…] A savings plan was drawn up in mid-2023, but did not work.
There were no supporting action plans, ownership, budget impacts, tracking and reporting, and governance applied to the savings programme.
[…] Yet senior managers kept on telling the health minister savings were on track. In the face of that, performance reporting warned of “extreme risk” around savings, but any “course-correct... was missing.”
Basically, they lied. Like I said: if Health NZ was a private company the people involved would be facing criminal charges.
Budgets were found to be inaccurate,” the report said.
Managers down the chain lacked control, and some believed that some extra money somewhere existed to cover “known overspending.
“Inconsistent budget setting and lack of accountability led to unexpected overspending and financial deficits which went undetected for a period of time.”
A revolving door of staff undermined capability and experience, diminishing financial controls.
In other words it was such a shit show even new staff hires didn’t want anything to do with it.
[…] The agency’s board was sacked and replaced by Levy in mid-2024. A deficit put at $130m-plus a month continued.
Within one week in February, chief executive Margie Apa resigned, as did the director-general of health – a Ministry of Health Ministry – and the director of public health.
[…] Labour leader Chris Hipkins, in a state of the nation speech on Friday, said the party’s third goal was a quality public healthcare system where “everyone has access to the care they need, when they need it.”
Yeah, sure.
This goes beyond just financial mismanagement. In fact, it begs the question, can people really be this useless? If you know what I mean.
Who knows. If we had something like DOGE this
Source:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/544103/health-new-zealand-lost-control-of-spending-deloitte-report-finds
Kevin is a Libertarian and pragmatic anarchist. His favourite saying: “There but for the grace of God go I.” This article was first published HERE
Kevin is a Libertarian and pragmatic anarchist. His favourite saying: “There but for the grace of God go I.” This article was first published HERE
3 comments:
People need to be held to account otherwise the incompetence, or worse corruption, will start again in 8 years.
When a problem arises from Labour mismanagement of the economy the cause is insinuated over that entire organisation. That cannot be correct as many of us have had great care and health assistance from our hospitals etc. Not everybody is hopeless and careless of cost in their job.
It would be very simple to implement a DOGE analysis and first see what the monthly payments were attributed to . Second define what management attended to on a weekly basis from this point on .
It works as in the construction industry you sign in each day and sign out at days /part day end with a notation of what and where you were working/constructing . Its called management and the contractor and client are all on the same page .
Health et al could attribute costs each day as well and then collate monthly and know exactly the position or the problem.
A typical Labour ideological mess, to do a health restructure in the middle of a pandemic. Centralization is always best, so we will carry on regardless. If the Govt employed the best people to manage the fiasco, they would have been told it was a bad plan. Instead yes-men and DEI hires in the Health Dept just did what they were told.
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