People over Profit - Tararua communities have made themselves clear
The meetings across Tararua have now finished, but the message from the community could hardly be clearer. They want safe, sustainable healthcare in their towns, and they want a say in what happens next.
Around 200 people packed into Dannevirke Town Hall on Thursday night for the final meeting, following earlier meetings in Pahīatua and Woodville.
It comes as serious concerns continue to be raised about staffing and the sustainability of health services across the district.
Dannevirke Community Hospital has temporarily stopped taking new admissions while Health New Zealand brings in additional clinical staff. Health NZ has said it is committed to keeping the hospital open and maintaining its current services.
Meanwhile, six nurses resigned from Pahīatua Medical Centre this week. The Post reports that Tararua Health Group had 72 staff resign over the past two years. With those latest resignations and three GPs due to leave in coming weeks, the number of departures reaches 81.
Tararua Health Group operates Dannevirke Community Hospital and medical centres in the district. It is owned by OmniHealth, a network of medical practices around New Zealand.
For Kaitiaki Hauora, what has happened in Tararua goes directly to one of our three asks:
Keep healthcare public.
Our public healthcare system cannot be another thing corporations can make money from.
At Thursday night's meeting, former Dannevirke Community Hospital sonographer Annie Poulton described the loss of experienced staff over recent years, telling RNZ the hospital had begun to feel like “a block of Swiss cheese” because so many people had left.
Tania Chamberlain, chief operations officer at Ngāti Kahungunu ki Tamaki-nui-a-Rua, told RNZ that clinicians had been sending patients to emergency departments rather than admitting them locally because they did not feel the hospital was safe.
Those are serious concerns. And now they are being investigated.
Health NZ carried out an unannounced audit of Dannevirke Community Hospital on Tuesday, following an earlier scheduled audit in June. Pahīatua Medical Centre is also being reviewed by a GP and practice manager, with findings expected shortly.
Health NZ central region director of planning, funding and outcomes Geoff Gwyn told the Dannevirke meeting the agency had listened to concerns raised by the community and clinicians. Health NZ is bringing additional clinical staff into Dannevirke Community Hospital for the next 30 days while staffing issues are addressed.
The three community meetings were organised at short notice by Kaitiaki Hauora executive member and spokesperson Malcolm Mulholland, who somehow pulled the whole thing together across Tararua in a matter of days.
Not bad for a week's work, Malcolm.
And for now, he's calling time on further action while we wait to see what the investigations find.
Malcolm told The Post that further action planned for Wednesday would no longer go ahead:
“We're going to wait to see what the findings of the audit are and whether or not Tararua Health Group has any long-term future in the delivery of healthcare in the Tararua region.”
That doesn't mean the pressure comes off.
As Tania Chamberlain told RNZ after the final meeting, the concern now is that once the meetings are over, everyone simply returns to business as usual.
That cannot happen.
These meetings have shown how deeply people in Tararua care about their health services. They have also shown what happens when communities feel decisions about those services are being made without them.
There is already strong support being expressed for healthcare in Tararua to return to some form of community ownership. What that might look like, and what the audit findings tell us about the current services, are questions still to be answered.
But one principle shouldn't be complicated.
Healthcare exists to care for people.
Public money should deliver safe, accessible healthcare. Health workers should be supported to do their jobs. Rural communities should not have to fight to retain services the rest of us would consider fundamental.
The meetings are over.
Now we wait for the audit findings.
And then we'll see what needs to happen next.
People over profit. Every time.
Listen and read RNZ’s report here
1News report embedded below: