OCTOBER 2019
CE update
In the news for good reasons It’s great to see STUFF’s new series of articles ‘Hard Yakka’ which are delving into different areas, roles and people that don’t always make the media headlines. The stories will cover areas from public health nursing in the south, working at the front line from an ED receptionist to a trauma nurse and more besides. I hope you take the time to read and share these stories. Here’s a link to the Hard Yakka series: www.waikatodhb.health.nz/hardyakka
Moving to Waiora CBD (old Farmers building) The Waiora CBD building is on track and now being occupied on a phased basis, with project commissioning teams moving in during October and over 275 team members to move between 1 November and 2 December. The services moving in the November phase are Public Health, Strategy and Funding then START with Information Services in early December. They will occupy the first floor. Other services will move in the new year. Due to acceleration of the fit out program, we have been able to bring forward moves planned in 2020 by over a month. There will be between 500 and 600 staff moving to the Waiora CBD by the end of April.
Recruitment to vacancies and other executive team changes We have appointed Nick Wilson to be the director of communications. He comes to us with a good mix of skills having worked as a journalist before shifting to communications where he has worked across the public and private sectors. Nick currently leads the Communications team at Unitec and previously Nick Wilson was communications manager at Huawei.
Restructure of tier 3 management
The restructure document for tier 3 will be published very shortly and then after a two week consultation it will be implemented. As CE I am responsible for the smooth running of Waikato DHB and ultimately responsible for any failings. Any executive team is a key organisational design choice, including the size of that executive team and the delineation of functions. The intention of the executive restructure is to focus on organisational wide and strategic level decisions and applying this framework in an intentional way. There are many good people in and around the executive leadership team who are accountable directly to me but there are simply too many for me to provide oversight on and the executive leadership team is too large to provide for effective decision-making. I believe it is important that at the executive level there is a clear focus on the clinical perspective and clinical quality. Waikato DHB is a complex health system that provides tertiary services for the Midland Region of over 900,000 people.
Interim chief operating officer appointed for Waikato DHB as Ron Dunham leaves
Interim chief operating officer Ron Dunham is leaving Waikato DHB on Friday 1 November. Director of Ambulatory, Cancer and Regional services Alex Gordon will take the role of acting chief operating officer when he returns from annual leave on Tuesday 5 November, replacing Ron who has been interim chief operating officer since January 2019. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ron for stepping into this challenging role and staying with us for much longer than he intended. Your support has been much appreciated. Alex will be in the role until Leena Singh joins us in January 2020 as permanent executive director of Hospital and Community services.
