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DHB to look at job cuts in saving drive

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Thu, 23 Feb 2012 1:46p.m.

Mr Climo says the DHB is looking at a range of options to reduce costs (file)

Mr Climo says the DHB is looking at a range of options to reduce costs (file)

Waikato District Health Board is looking to save $30 million over the next three years and is not ruling out job cuts.

Chief executive Craig Climo told the DHB's 6000 employees yesterday that savings of $20m needed to be found from July this year and then a further $5m in each of the two following years.

Mr Climo told Radio New Zealand it was currently running at a surplus but needed to find ways to plug a $20m gap this year.

"We will be looking almost certainly at jobs," he said.

"Clearly what we're not going to do is to sacrifice clinical and patient outcomes."

Mr Climo says if cuts to staff levels need to be made it will first look at roles other than those on the front line.

"You start further back than the front line but I'm not going to rule out the front line. There's a lot of staff. If we were to say, for example, this has to come entirely out of administrative staff, that would be a totally unreasonable burden - the organisation couldn't function."

Mr Climo says the DHB is looking at a range of options to reduce costs but it won't come at expense of services to patients.

"We are not going to be reducing the quality of our services such that there is any detriment in terms of patient outcomes. That is just not acceptable, it won't happen."

NZN

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Comments

23 Feb 2012 02:49p.m.

Robo wrote:

$3333.33 per head of staff has to be "trimmed". Given the economic times I'd look at the fat end of the salary scale, upper management and what input they actually have compared to what is being paid in consultancy fees / out-work.
I seriously cannot understand why so many goverment departments have such extreamly highly paid management that cannot make a decission without getting consultants in at an even more exorberant cost to the tax payer. How do these people get into management if they cannot make decissions and "manage". I feel for the over-worked and under paid front line staff who are already battling away with such tight and constrained situations as well as having to deal with an extreamly tough economic enviroment.

23 Feb 2012 02:26p.m.

James J.Read wrote:

The idea of reducing the number of medical personal should be utterly abhorrent.Rather we should be expanding preventive medical activities. If $25 million needs to be saved, lets start with the politically correct cultural activities. A poster warning of the symptoms of menginococcal disease written in Maori seen at Waikato Hospital was unhelpful to most people including Maori.