Wairarapa Working Towards New Business Plan

Health Minister Bill English said today Wairarapa Health was working towards a new business plan for the year and he expected this would be presented to him shortly.

"The board of Wairarapa Health is working extremely hard at the moment to address some of the fundamental problems facing the hospital.

"Key amongst these are the need to reconfigure wards and staffing in order to match costs with income.

"The Hospital Plan made it clear that the current range of services, including accident and emergency services, would be maintained at Masterton Hospital. However, this hospital has the highest costs of its type in the country and there is no obvious reason for this.

"People in the Wairarapa deserve the security of knowing their hospital is on a sound financial footing, but that will only be achieved once some of these issues have been sorted out.

"I have not supported the 1998/99 business plan as it was presented to me because it did not outline how the hospital planned to achieve a break-even position. I look forward to seeing a new business plan for Wairarapa Health shortly," said Mr English.