Lester Levy: Health NZ Commissioner on the return to a governing board, the organisation's status

Health New Zealand is moving into its next chapter after a year under a commissioner. 

The board's making a return today, with outgoing commissioner Lester Levy taking up the role as chairman for the next 12 months.  

Levy told Mike Hosking that although the agency's reached a turning point, the challenge isn't over.  

He says they need to involve clinicians and those on the ground in decisions and provide modern tools to the workforce.   

But Levy says the organisation's financially on track and has a very stable platform to move forward.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New chapter for our health system. Today, the board got sacked.
Lester Levy became the commissioner. He was charged with saving
money and tidying the place up. As of today, governance
Board returns with Lester's chair. I think that's how it works, Lester,
Morning to you, morning, Mike, as an exercise of getting
rid of the hopeless, stabilizing the joint, and getting some
fresh blood. And how's that gone.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Actually, it's been very challenging, Mike, but it's actually gone
very well. The organization is in much better shape. It's
more stable and more secure. We're financially on track, and
we have arrested the long run multi year decline in
the critical system level performance measures. So I think that

(00:40):
it's been difficult, challenging, but the outcome has been good
and we've got a very stable platform to move forward from.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Did the voluminosity surprise you.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yes, yes, Well, I'll give you an indication. In a
period of the last twelve months, we would have had
twelve board meetings, we had seventy two commissioner meetings the
last one is tonight, and fifty sorry, sixty nine turnaround meetings.
So we've had to work at a very high cadence
and workload in order to get through the volume. But

(01:12):
that was necessary.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Is am I going to see this when Manie hurts
and I need a doctor or a nurse or an
operating theater.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Well, that's critical question. There has been a very long
run decline in a system level performance around waiting times,
immunization rates, productivity, and we have arrested that. So we've
stopped the decline and we've started the improvement. Just give
you us rough example, like immunization rates in December, we're

(01:42):
seventy five percent than are eighty two percent, first time
they've been over eighty four years. But if we can
get an increase of seven percent like that in six
seven months and keep doing that, that's when people will
see the real impact. So I think it's during this
next twelve months that will get that to the level
that people will start seeing the impact, because our whole

(02:03):
focus is on patient access and we realistic we need
to get these to a level where it actually starts
making a discernible difference to patients.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
So you've got you guys, you've got an infrastructure committee,
and you've got a Crown observer as well. Is that
too many people?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, it's different to what we used to do. But
I think that there's good people and I think the
Infrastructure Committee is a big help because you know, we've
got to have the bandwidth to manage all their projects.
There's hundreds of them, and they will focus on the
more significant projects. There's really good established relationships between the

(02:40):
people who are working through this, so yeah, I think
it's going to work very well. The big issue is
we can't work at the cadence of a commissioner a system.
It won't be as agile as that, but we can't
work at the cadence of a typical board. We're going
to have to keep the cadence up in order to deliver.
Critical thing for me and the organization is we've reached
this point of turnaround, but we have got a lot

(03:04):
of work to do to devolve decision making and resources
close to the action, a lot of work to get
the clinicians fully involved in decision making, and most of all,
we have to get modern tools into the hands of
our workforce in order to do the work in the
best possible way. And I think the New Zealand helps them.
Has drifted for some years and the technological advances that

(03:28):
are available elsewhere aren't all available yet, and so we
don't have those announcements right yet. But in the next
three or four months we'll have significant announcements about modernization
of digital and also technological innovation, which will be great
for our clinicians in particular.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
All I can do is wish you the very best, Lester,
and thank you for the work you've done so far.
Lester Leeby, who's the commissioner coming chairman, Commissioner now back
to chairman. And they seem slowly but surely now it's
highly political, but they seem slowly but surely be getting this.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
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