Cunliffe David: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Cunliffe David: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:647;Page:15972] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I thank the member for the opportunity to briefly comment on the Canterbury District Health Board. The member is indeed correct; it is one of the largest health boards in the country and I think overall one of the better run health boards. It has a very competent board and as far as I can tell a competent management and clinical team. It has been the beneficiary as have many other health boards of the largest capital building programme in New Zealand’s history which has been mounted by this Government over the last 7 or 8 years and it has like the rest of the system seen a significant increase in its baseline budget through the objective funding formula that is rolled out nationwide which provides for an increment based on demographic change and forecasted costs. It is called FFT/Demo and is rolled out to all district health boards around the country including Canterbury. 
The district health board has also been the beneficiary of a more sustainable workforce position which has resulted from considerable investment in the health workforce under this Government. Indeed 60 percent of costs in our district health boards arise from the payroll of doctors nurses orderlies and those support staff who are in the back office including those few in management positions. One wonders where this health system would be if it had not had the kind of investment that the Government has ploughed into it and whether the occasional complaints that we hear which by no means indicate any kind of system crisis would have swollen to some kind of avalanche without the investment that has been made. I think the Opposition needs to be a little clearer about whether it is suggesting that the Government has been in some way profligate with this investment or whether it is suggesting that it is not enough because occasionally I hear both sides of that argument being raised by the Opposition. 
In any complex system there will always be areas for improvement. In any hospital system there is always a juggle between acute admissions and elective procedures and the constant process of triage—and I am pleased that the Canterbury District Health Board has had a 100 percent success rate in meeting its triage 1 targets. Like the member I am not pleased that the board’s percent success rate for triage 2 is only in the 40s; it is not at a level that the Government expects and the ministry will be working with the district health board to get those numbers up. But again I think if we see this in perspective—if we see it against the reputation that the Canterbury District Health Board has in many ways for being a centre of medical excellence—then we will see a picture that overall is robust healthy and positive. 
There is a bit of a tendency for the Opposition members to perhaps run down a little the efforts of clinicians. I want to acknowledge that clinicians are the backbone of our system and that they go to work every day to try to make the lives of their patients better. I remember the words of Heather Roy who is not a member of the National Party—and on this occasion they will be very thankful of that—when she described a Capital and Coast District Health Board’s Wellington hospital as a “killer hospital”. If I had a dollar for every email or letter I had from distraught clinicians and that community in response to that kind of cheap political name-calling I would be a wealthy man. 
We have to work together to search out the improvement opportunities and make the system better and stronger than it is. It is certainly a lot better than it was when this Government took office when it was funded at about half of what it currently is. Thank you. 
Report noted.