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Speaker 1: Now four hundred million dollars savings. We talked about this

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Speaker 1: last week. Remember that came out of the public service.

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Speaker 1: So we're looking to say, four hundred million dollars on consultants.

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Speaker 1: Are half of it, as it turns out, has come

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Speaker 1: out of one department, the Health Department, couple hundred million dollars,

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Speaker 1: and as you can imagine, they're not particularly happy. The

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Speaker 1: Association of Salary Medical Specialist executive director is Sarah Dalton,

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Speaker 1: who's with us.

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Speaker 2: Morning, Good Morning Mike.

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Speaker 1: Even with these cuts, they're still looking to spend half

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Speaker 1: a billion dollars. It's an extraordinary amount of money, isn't it.

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Speaker 2: And there's an extraordinary amount of money. We know that

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Speaker 2: doctors aren't cheap to get or to keep, but this

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Speaker 2: seems flagrant in terms of taking the short term option

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Speaker 2: not looking a little bit further down the road.

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Speaker 1: And so when we talk about say locums versus consultants,

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Speaker 1: how many of that or how much of that money

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Speaker 1: is spent on locum's actual doctors as opposed to consultants.

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Speaker 2: Look, it's an endless quest for us to try and

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Speaker 2: dig down into exactly how much money they're spending on

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Speaker 2: their permanent doctors as opposed to locums. They're cagy about it,

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Speaker 2: but there are a number of services that have two

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Speaker 2: many any locums, and people called locums being paid excessive

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Speaker 2: rates who are there for months rather than days or weeks.

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Speaker 1: Is this Health New Zealand not performing well as an

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Speaker 1: agency in general or not.

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Speaker 2: I think there's been a tendency to rely on locans

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Speaker 2: in the past, so there was a pattern established under

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Speaker 2: the DHBs, but I don't know. They don't spend any

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Speaker 2: time looking at the courtings and conditions for permanent staff,

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Speaker 2: which would be more of an investment approach into trying

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Speaker 2: to get a stable workforce, and we find that very frustrating.

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Speaker 1: So you're between a rock and a hard place. You

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Speaker 1: can surely you can understand the government looking to save

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Speaker 1: money if there's money to be saved, but you presumably

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Speaker 1: want the agency to do something a bit better by

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Speaker 1: way of solving the problem long term.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we probably sit in a slightly different place than that.

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Speaker 2: We don't see health as a place for money saving,

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Speaker 2: but we do see it as a place to spend

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Speaker 2: money carefully and efficiently, and certainly having an over reliance

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Speaker 2: on locums is not a good use of money, all.

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Speaker 1: Right, appreciate it. Sarah Saradulton, Associated Salary, Medical Specialists, Executive Directed.

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Speaker 2: For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to

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Speaker 2: news talks.

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Speaker 1: It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio