Concerned citizens call public meeting on integrated health centre
“We’re really not anti-integration. The IMG hasn’t actually been carrying the Golden Bay public along with them,” says Takaka resident Dick Wenzel, speaking on behalf of a number of citizens concerned about the proposal and process regarding the Bay’s health changes.
“The people who have organised this public meeting have been brought together because we’ve written letters to the paper asking questions about the integrated health project. We’ve asked questions and we’ve raised issues but we never feel that we get complete answers from the interim management group’s spokespeople. We’ve decided to call a public meeting to give everyone a forum to for community members to say what’s on their minds.”
The group, which includes Elizabeth Warren, Victoria Davis, Barry Cashman, Harry Holmwood and others, advertised their “important forum” in last week’s and this week’s editions of The GB Weekly. It will take place at Golden Bay High School next Tuesday 20 April at 7pm.
Dick explained that the group felt that the IMG’s public meetings and information events were “carefully managed” and that there had been “no real opportunity for anyone else to have input.”
“The original community meeting expressed some support for investigating an integrated health facility but we feel that the IMG has gone further than that meeting gave them a mandate to do,” he said.
Dick said that the group believed that some integration of services is “highly desirable” but that the emphasis seemed to have shifted from integration to “building real estate, and that leads to our worries about money,” he said. “If the property-owning trust finds itself in financial difficulties, does it fall back in any way on the community? If a body like the DHB has money worries, that’s fine, but this community doesn’t have the wherewithal to take responsibility if the trust falls over.”
Dick said that his group felt that the IMG’s language had changed over time and that, after initially talking about improved health services as an outcome of the integration process, the IMG was now talking about maintaining services.
“Their language has pushed the community’s expectations down,” he said. “We’re all interested in health services – it’s self-interest of course, because we are all consumers. Golden Bay has had very good service from its health practitioners. The integration project was originally aimed at improving the recruitment and retention of health professionals but the process has upset some of our existing practitioners, so recruitment and retention have certainly not been enhanced yet. Our fear is that relationships in the health services here might have been damaged.”
Another aspect of the integration project that is concerning the group is the location of the medical centre, said Dick.
“We wonder if members of the public, especially those with restricted mobility, will find it acceptable to go to Central Takaka to go to the doctor. Being close to the high school is important too. Couldn’t we have the hospital and the rest home up at Central Takaka and the medical centre in the town?”
Dick said that another aim of the next week’s meeting was to determine whether there was a “silent majority” of Golden Bay people with questions and issues about the integration project. He said that the organisers of the meeting had great freedom in the sense that they were not answerable to taxpayers or ratepayers.
“It’s a privilege to be able to do this, to be part of a group of interested citizens that brings forward questions. We’ve invited representatives of the IMG to the meeting so that they can hear people’s concerns.”
Neil Wilson
