Our Health System Must be Completely Transformed

 

Our health system is currently amidst chaos because of Covid19.

 

We could become distracted and engaged with that chaos, or we can seek an oasis within it. As chaos swirls around us, it takes strength and clarity of purpose to see beyond. From our place of clarity, we can use the fractured pieces that are strewn around us to see the truth. The original truth, of serving humanity, of justice, of equity

Now is the time of infinite potential to correct the path that we have been on.

To keep the broken structures dismantled. Those very structures that served power, and money, and the elite. Now is the time to build a system for health that is grounded in values that align with you, your family, your community and all humanity.

 

We need to become the novice now.

 

We need to be teachable and humble and have an ability to look at the world in an untainted manner. This is the time to be open to expanding and learning. What lessons can we learn at this time? It’s ok to be in a place of ‘not knowing’ this is where we integrate new understandings and create space for something new.

 

I want a health system that respects me and my family and that respects you and yours.

 

I don’t intend to look back, in even a years time, and wish we’d done more.

 

I intend to look back and see rising from the rubble, the most beautiful landscape where nature is flourishing and where people are beginning to walk with real heart and purpose again. I intend to look back and see the health system rising anew

 

Nothing that has been, should be as it was again.

 

 

The health system will not be allowed to return to its former state.

 

Now, amidst the chaos, we can build a system that serves its users. A health system that serves politics, bureaucrats, executives and boards, is not our future. Now is the time in history where we can begin again.

 

The new health system should not be the drain that its predecessor has been on our economy. The Ministry of Health cannot continue to dictate beauracratic and political terms to DHB boards, who then enact that madness in the operation of health.

 

Every institution in health is currently in chaos – it is time for every one of those institutions to look out into the future, at the future generations of Aotearoa and to the whenua (earth) on which they will reside, and do something dramatically different.

 

We have been and will continue to be blessed here in Aotearoa. COVID-19 has, and will continue to be, managed through tough control measures. We are not digging mass graves. We are not dying in our thousands. There is, and will be grief. We already have families mourning the loss of loved ones taken by this virus. We are a country that mourns collectiviely for those lives. We have an intense spirit here where we join together at times like this and forget our differences in the face of an adversity that impacts us all. Lets harness that spirit now.

 

A new health system won’t stop the next viral infiltration, it won’t stop disease and illness. What it will do is create a new way of being and living in Aotearoa that reflects our collective spirit. Where we can be looked after and cared for in a way that works for us and our families. You will get to choose in health – like you do when you shop for clothes. You should be able to access health in a way that gives you choice on where to access, how to access, when to access and to pick and choose between providers and services. Putting you in control, a system built around you and the way you live your life.

 

You will not be the servant to a bureaucratic machine, doing as it says, when it says. You will be served by it. You will be the Centre of Health.

 

What does it look like?

How does it work?

Who is involved?

I don’t know yet.

 

But i’m certainly not going to listen to the naysayers, or the people currently in positions of power who want to stay there. We, at The Centre for Health, are already doing health differently, in a tiny controlled way. We already run a health system outside of the system. We have been doing it for 10 years. Don’t tell me it can’t be done. Tell me instead that you can help. That you will help. Tell me you can see the future and it is bright for us all. Tell me to remain calm in the chaos so we can use the infinite potential that is here, to build a health system that works for the health and wellbeing of people.

 

How do we do this?

 

If you are interested, not self-interested, in pioneering a new health system. Lets talk.

 

We need big thinkers, innovators, we need super organised ‘doers’, dreamers, we need young people, we need our elders. We need those who have a passion glowing in their heart and a fire in their belly

 

No inflated ego’s, no prejudices, this new system must work for people regardless of the colour of their skin, their beliefs, their tendency to vote left or to vote right, or how much money they have, or don’t have.

 

If you are comfortable earning an income from the current system and you are scared that your comforts and your way of living will be disrupted – then grieve what has been, find your heart and dream of making a difference. A real difference.

 

We don’t need people who only think in terms of current systems and processes, we don’t need patch protection, nor agendas that keep the current haves and have nots seperate. We need people who can think outside a medical, institutionalised model and into an actual operationalised human model of health and wellbeing.

 

And to my Māori colleagues, who i know this korero will resonate with. I challenge you too (as I do with the organisations that i am involved with), to think beyond funded contracts from DHBs and the ministry. If you had the power and the resource what would health services look like – they cannot continue to look like they do, with a plastic korowai draped over a service agreement to make it look like kaupapa Māori. What do your communities need? How should health work? Don’t be constrained by how it has always been. What do your tupuna say? Are you listening?

 

A new health system will happen. By tearing down boundaries, by challenging complacency, by daring to force change. A bespoke system for Aotearoa that reflects our people, and our collective spirit.