Clean bill of health

By Faye Wheeler
July 24 2014 - 4:30am

Western NSW Local Health District has clawed its way out of a financial hole and chief executive Scott McLachlan says it must continue to live within its means in the future. 

The pledge from Mr McLachlan came as the public health authority serving Dubbo and the western region yesterday announced an improvement in its financial position for the 12 months to June 30.

In a significant turnaround, the health district posted a deficit of $500,000 in 2013-14, just a fraction of its $750 million budget.

It came just a year after it overspent by $19.5 million and had NSW Health bail it out, ensuring it could still pay its creditors.

Yesterday Mr McLachlan said the stronger financial position was significant.

“We certainly want to be an organisation that’s trusted by the community to deliver high-quality health services and I think this announcement about our budget result certainly helps build trust,” he said.

At the start of the 2013-14  financial year Mr McLachlan, then in the role for less than 12 months, had offered assurances that annual overspending of about $30 million would be addressed with measures that would “not compromise patient care”. 

Yesterday he spoke of the health district’s successes in achieving both its financial and health goals.

He also acknowledged personnel changes had prompted “a bit of tension”, but said they had resulted in “a reliable model of staffing for every patient”, with some places gaining staff while others were found to need less.

“We’ve had to make some tough decisions in the past couple of years about the range of staff we employ, what their focus is,” he said.

“So that comes with a bit of tension and we’ve tried to be as open and transparent with communities about that, particularly in our smaller rural communities where there’s a lot of trust and faith in the local hospital...”

The chief executive told of a variety of strategies put in place.

A lot of the solutions had been “just doing better deals with suppliers”.

“We did a new deal with our pathology provider that saved us $2.5 million so it was using our bulk purchasing leverage to get some better prices,” he said.

Savings were made by employing permanent doctors and nurses and relying less on locum and agency resources and reducing staff costs for travel, accommodation and vehicles.

“So in Dubbo we’ve recruited 15 specialists in the past 12 months,” Mr McLachlan said.

The launch of the Strategic Health Services Plan 2013-16 had also proved significant, and had at its heart “trying to keep patients healthy at home”.

“So we’ve tried to divert as much focus as we can to community-based services, (keeping) people out of hospital unnecessarily and that’s been really successful,” Mr McLachlan said. 

“So it’s a lot cheaper to provide services in the community, but it’s also a lot better for patients who don’t need to come into hospital from time to time.

Mr McLachlan said the health district would not rest on its laurels as it managed its $801 million budget for 2014-2015.

“It’s taxpayers’ money and we treat that like absolutely precious gold because we want to maximise our taxpayers’ money in delivering as much service for the community as possible,” he said.

“But the reality is there will always be a limit to that and that’s the budget we’ve got to live within.”

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