There is hope - NZ centralises its healthcare system.

Well, hello again blog, it’s been a while.

For the past four years I’ve been happily working away as the communications designer at Southern DHB. It’s been fantastic. I get to work on numerous projects, from public health promotion to external and internal comms and service type things.

I’ve had a fair few design challenges along the way, but nothing to really blog about. Working in the healthcare sector is like one giant wicked problem, so you do what you can where you can, hoping that you are making a little difference.

Early in the game, I tried to visualise the space I was working in. It didn’t take long to realise that this was no easy task. The NZ health care system is a complex overly complicated, bureaucratic mess. A messy beast. A beast that seemed to be crippling itself. (This article is a simple explainer) Whenever I started with a simple problem it quickly became a massively multi-faceted mess. Not to mention the number of different lenses that could be applied (i.e. do we make this model patient centred, holistic, governed or mechanical?)

So I became complacent (like many others) by nibbling around the edges - doing what we could with limited time and resources. This general frustration felt by many in the healthcare sector is why, when the changes were announced this week to centralise our national healthcare system, many released a long sigh of relief (and even some whoops of joy)

There’s some hope again. Hope that we will improve patient outcomes, hope that we can action equity, hope that we can value our staff - our patients and their time. Hope that we can create a more seamless patient journey, hope that change can come quicker and easier, hope that we can work as one united system country wide.

But the changes needed require a lot more than a change in system architecture. They require a change how in how we work. They need to design a system that acknowledges and removes past/current state bias so that we don’t continually make the same mistakes. They need to hear from a number of voices and actually co-design around all the good parts (and bad) parts. This change transition will be no easy task and should not be overlooked as it’ll largely determine the success of the final system state. 

So far we have not been given any information about the transition or how it’ll work. This is the real meat in the sandwich, and we as a society (and esp. as ‘local’ voices) need to be critical in the implementation of ‘Health Care NZ’ . We need to be included in the design phase, not only so that we are more likely to accept the outcome but so that we feel heard, because we haven’t been for so sooo long. A quote I heard has been stuck in my head all week "culture eats strategy for breakfast".

Images from the Health Reform White Paper below.
(DEPARTMENT OF THE PRIME MINSTER AND CABINET)