Hospital & Specialist Services Workstream

We have a unique opportunity to organise ourselves to deliver the system shifts needed to create a unified health system.

One of the big pieces of work underway is designing the operating model for our hospital and specialist services. We’re asking how we might operate as national and regional services while keeping specialist local knowledge where it’s needed. We are working in partnership with Te Aka Whai Ora to ensure hauora Māori and Māori health equity are front and centre as we develop a new operating model.

The new system needs to work for patients, clinicians and managers. It needs to be joined up in a way that makes sense and supports people in their work delivering care to patients.

We have an ambitious timeline to put a new operating model in place and we are listening and learning from the people working in the system. You can read more about the working group, how to get involved and the timeline below We’ll provide regular updates and opportunities so you can get involved.

Ken Whelan, Independent Chair

Ken has been a CEO of health providers and commissioners in Aotearoa and Australia. He was the Deputy Director General of Health in New South Wales and, more recently, Crown Monitor at the former Counties Manukau, Waikato and Bay of Plenty DHBs. Ken has a nursing background and is experienced in delivering strong collaborative leadership and sustainable organisational change.

Joanne Gibbs, Senior Responsible Officer and Programme Lead

Jo has a wealth of experience at executive level, across the health system both in Aotearoa and the UK. She has worked for 5 years as Director of Provider Services in Auckland. More recently, she was the National Director for the COVID19 Vaccination Programme, and the interim National Director of the National Public Health Service, leading the operating model design as the service was set up.

Ken and Jo are working in partnership with colleagues in Te Aka Whai Ora and a project team including clinicians and system leaders.

With input from a range of people this work will produce an operating model design for hospital and specialist service that will deliver a more equitable, accessible and people-centred system to improve the health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders. The operating model design will include:

• Options and recommendations for how regions and local services will operate in the future

• A costed management structure and an accountability framework
• A proposal for how clinical leadership operates in the system
• An implementation roadmap that shows how we can move to the new design from where we are today

The team will work closely with other workstreams to create a unified health system.

The transformation of Te Whatu Ora’s Hospital and Specialist Services will take time. This work is focused on the initial design, which we anticipate will be completed by the end of December 2022.

We’ve engaged with a large number of our people across hospital and specialist services. Thanks to everyone who joined in those sessions; the enthusiasm, insight and contributions have been brilliant.

Below you can find a summary of some of these sessions.  We’re also liaising with other special interest groups, patient experience and whānau voice team to make sure we include patient and whānau voice in the operating model design.

Clinical Special Interest Groups

We have run a number of sessions with clinicians who put up their hand to be involved in the work. These sessions were based around four areas they told us were important to consider.  You can read a summary from each of these sessions below:

• Equitable special access for rural communities
• Moving services to primary and community settings
• Service equity, access and accountability framework
• Culture, leadership and wellbeing

Regional Hui

We have been seeking engagement and input into our operating model from leaders, clinicians and our Māori workforce across the motu. In total we will have visited 15 different locations. 

Thank you to everyone who has attended these sessions and the people who helped to run them. We’ve had some fantastic engagement and some valuable input into some early ideas and thinking.

We will share more about these sessions in the next Hospital and Specialist Services pānui.

All Staff Hui

Thank you to everyone who joined us at our staff hui in October.  We had great engagement.  We’ve pulled together a summary of the questions you asked along with the answers. You can view these here: All Staff Hui Q&A