Nelson Hospital boss Lexie O’Shea says she did everything she could to raise issues higher up at Health New Zealand before doctors went public with their concerns earlier this year.
O’Shea was the chief executive of the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board and is now the group director of operations (GDO) for the region.
“I think as GDO, I’ve done my job well,” she said. “I’ve escalated as required and I’ve worked closely with the clinical teams to ascertain the biggest risks.”
Doctors interviewed by 1News painted a dire picture of the situation at Nelson Hospital. They said some patients were undergoing emergency surgery and having their cancers go from curable to incurable due to the long wait times.
O’Shea said she empathised with the doctors in the stories. “I felt for them. I have sleepless nights too when I see distressed staff. The wellbeing of staff is incredibly important”.
She agreed the risks were well known internally and said she escalated the issues as required. “I’m very confident that I did everything I could”. She would not say who she escalated them to or what the response was.
O’Shea said part of the issue was that, initially, under the new Health New Zealand structure there was less local decision making. She said recruiting staff was not straightforward.
However, Nelson Hospital anaesthetist Dr Katie Ben said the issues may have been exacerbated by Health New Zealand but they predated the new organisation.
“I would respectfully disagree. I think we have had staffing issues at Nelson Hospital for many more than the past three years,” Ben said,
O’Shea said demand for the hospital has increased and some staffing had increased, like nurses, but other medical specialties had not.
“We’ve got big waitlists, there’s no question. We’ve got a lot of work to do in our waitlist management,” O’Shea said.
“I don’t think it’s a failure but I do think that it’s something that we do need to address”.
Over the last two months 1News repeatedly asked for an interview with O’Shea. While other senior Health New Zealand managers have been available, she repeatedly declined our requests until today. Last week while in Nelson, Health Minister Simeon Brown said he expected she would make herself available for interviews.
O’Shea said she thought “national decisions required a national response”. This was in reference to a senior team of clinicians flown in to look at the issues after the first of the 1News stories.
Reviews from that team were due back later this month.
