Well today we heard that the NSW Health bureaucrats have taken their knife to the monolithic creations of 2005 and have said that the eight mega AHS's will change to seventeen Health district networks. So even without knowing the detail it certainly appears that the SSWAHS executive will be pontificating over a smaller area than the one they have now. Going, going, gone (hopefully) will be their bellowing cry - "Balmain to Bowral", possibly the two places in their empire that neither the CEO or his Deputy have even bothered to visit.
Socrates understands that when the Central Sydney Area Health merged with, what was then, the South West Sydney AHS in 2005 to form SSWAHS, most of the staff who took the top jobs came from the north. Their mindset remained in the north and anything that was good in the old SWSAHS was considered to be inferior.
It wasn't long before the new senators decided that "clinical streams" were to be the new way of doing things. Well, what a cash grab that turned out to be. People who worked in the clinical services in a collaborative health care "Team" suddenly became "owned" by Area Directors far removed from the site of operations. Suddenly, people who previously collaborated in the care of ill people were instructed to follow the new party line - the "Clinical Stream". Even within existing services, splits became apparent. So, solo nurse practitioners who worked in a collaborative way with community health nurses were hived off to different clinical streams. Generalist counsellors who worked collaboratively with mental health workers were placed into different clinical streams within streams. Adolescent mental health services suddenly became dis-integrated from adult mental health streams. For more than 3 years the SSWAHS health service providers did not have a resolution to where they would be located in whichever, Clinical Stream the SSWAHS executive finally decided upon.
One can only guess at the level of disharmony and disunity that existed in the SSWAHS workforce while the SSWAHS executive fiddled in Liverpool. The smell of smoke was all pervasive! Too many Nero s with fiddles and all trying to outdo each other. Micromanagement on a meglomaniac scale!
And now it is all about to change! If the current NSW Government remains or changes in March 2011, the monolithic structures like SSWAHS will be brought down. If the Federal government changes or remains the monolithic structures like SSWAHS will change!
So the moral of this tale is that it really doesn't mean a fig who you vote for these elections, change will come to SSWAHS and the Highlands health services will soon be returned to the people. Long live democracy and the Athens of the south!
