Sunday, April 09, 2006

Plunket to seek meeting with Prime Minister


Plunket has just announced that it is seeking an urgent meeting with the PM over withdrawal of funding of Plunketline, in favour of McKesson Corporation. The letter to the PM is on its way already. Plunket bosses want to ask whether it is the Governments intention to undermine Plunket.

Plunket President Kaye Crowther said, "The Government is placing key parts of the care of our children in the hands of an off-shore multi-national who the Ministry of Health has acknowledged has little or no experience in well child services".

Plunket was told that they did not get the contract because the Government thinks that McKesson can provide a better clinical telephone-based service. The new provider of this service after 1 July 2006 does not have the nurses to guarantee this service to the level specified in the contract

Helen Clark, who has never used plunket line for her children, doesn't seem to realise that mothers do not just want a functional clinical telephone service.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whilst at first glance it does appear that Plunket has lost the contract, the fact is, they couldn't deliver the goods.

They were simply collecting the money, then subcontracting to McKesson. Now, if the line was previously operated by McKesson, and will continue to be operated by McKesson, what's the problem?

Most calls were going unanswered, and the service levels were unacceptable. It would be interesting to see how much Plunket were fleecing off the top (ie the difference between what the government paid them, and what they paid their subcontractor).

I really don't see what the problem is. If Plunket were using the contract to provide the service to fund their other activities, is it really any surprise that the service failed?

Swimming said...

You obviously dont know nuch about PlunketLine.People calling PlunketLine are seeking the specialist advice and guidance of an experienced, trained Plunket nurse - not general health advice from a registered nurse, which is what will happen from 1 July.

Anonymous said...

You are absolutely right in that I don't know a lot about Plunketline, however it seems that they weren't providing this service to the majority of people trying to get through to them.

Thing is, my understanding is that the SAME people will be providing the service as were subcontracted by Plunket. If this is the case, it would follow that the SAME people are answering the calls. Also, is there really advice that a registered nurse couldn't give regarding baby health matters, given the correct guidelines?

As a matter of interest, do you have any involvement with Plunket or the current Plunketline service?

Anonymous said...

Pork Pie you are so wrong. Plunket weren't subcontracting the service to Healthline, it is the other way round. Healthline collects the $$$ and gets Plunket to answer the Plunket Line calls. Health line nurses do not have the same level of qualifications and experience that Plunket Line nurses have - so come 1st July when a distressed mother with a crying baby rings Healthline at 2am - what will happent to them?

Anonymous said...

actually if you knew much about them, you would know that they had got their answer rate up to over 60% (might not sound much, but a fast improvement on 12% it was at a year ago).

Anonymous said...

and you would know that they amnswerered more calls than they are funded for....

Anonymous said...

Pork Pie obviously does not have a handle on what Plunket is about or about Plunketline. His comments are libellous.