Sarah Dalton: The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Executive director

Half of the Government's $400m savings target has come out of Heath NZ in the form of contractors and consultant spending. 

The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Executive director Sarah Dalton says isn't happy about the cuts. 

"This seems flagrant in terms of taking the short-term option, not looking a little bit further down the road," she said. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now four hundred million dollars savings. We talked about this
last week. Remember that came out of the public service.
So we're looking to say, four hundred million dollars on consultants.
Are half of it, as it turns out, has come
out of one department, the Health Department, couple hundred million dollars,
and as you can imagine, they're not particularly happy. The
Association of Salary Medical Specialist executive director is Sarah Dalton,
who's with us.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Morning, Good Morning Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Even with these cuts, they're still looking to spend half
a billion dollars. It's an extraordinary amount of money, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
And there's an extraordinary amount of money. We know that
doctors aren't cheap to get or to keep, but this
seems flagrant in terms of taking the short term option
not looking a little bit further down the road.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
And so when we talk about say locums versus consultants,
how many of that or how much of that money
is spent on locum's actual doctors as opposed to consultants.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Look, it's an endless quest for us to try and
dig down into exactly how much money they're spending on
their permanent doctors as opposed to locums. They're cagy about it,
but there are a number of services that have two
many any locums, and people called locums being paid excessive
rates who are there for months rather than days or weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Is this Health New Zealand not performing well as an
agency in general or not.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I think there's been a tendency to rely on locans
in the past, so there was a pattern established under
the DHBs, but I don't know. They don't spend any
time looking at the courtings and conditions for permanent staff,
which would be more of an investment approach into trying
to get a stable workforce, and we find that very frustrating.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
So you're between a rock and a hard place. You
can surely you can understand the government looking to save
money if there's money to be saved, but you presumably
want the agency to do something a bit better by
way of solving the problem long term.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, we probably sit in a slightly different place than that.
We don't see health as a place for money saving,
but we do see it as a place to spend
money carefully and efficiently, and certainly having an over reliance
on locums is not a good use of money, all.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Right, appreciate it. Sarah Saradulton, Associated Salary, Medical Specialists, Executive Directed.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
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