Celebrating 25 Years of Scoop
Ian Powell
Otaihanga Second Opinion is a regular health systems blog in New Zealand.
Ian Powell is the editor of the health systems blog 'Otaihanga Second Opinion.' He is also a columnist for New Zealand Doctor, occasional columnist for the Sunday Star Times, and contributor to the Victoria University hosted Democracy Project. For over 30 years , until December 2019, he was the Executive Director of Salaried Medical Salaried Medical Specialists, the union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand.
Ian Powell - Latest News [Page 1]
Information Technology And New Zealand's Health System: 0 Steps Forward, 2 Back
Monday, 22 July 2024, 8:52 am | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses in a wider context the cutting of Health New Zealand’s IT budget. More >>
Health Leadership, Tobacco Control And A Sacred Oath: ‘First Do No Harm’
Sunday, 14 July 2024, 7:37 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the conflict between the government’s decision to repeal new world-leading tobacco controls and the medical ethics of doctors working in senior Health New Zealand positions. More >>
Structured Literacy – How Rigidity Flows From Ideology
Tuesday, 9 July 2024, 5:09 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses how the ideological use of structural literacy has led to rigidity in the teaching and learning of literacy in New Zealand primary schools. More >>
Corporate General Practice Ownership Highlights Unintended Perverse Outcome
Sunday, 7 July 2024, 1:06 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses how corporate ownership of general practices can, by abusing the capitation funding system, have detrimental consequences for primary healthcare in New Zealand. More >>
Keith Locke: Hard On Issues; Soft On People
Sunday, 30 June 2024, 11:57 am | Ian Powell
This is a tribute to the recently deceased Keith Locke who was much more than an influential Green MP in New Zealand. His whole life was around political and social justice advocacy. More >>
Data Cleansing Of Unmet Patient Need Hides A National Health Scandal
Wednesday, 26 June 2024, 6:17 am | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the scandal revealed by academic research on unmet patient need in New Zealand’s health system. More >>
Hegemony, Meaning And Ideology Through Structured Literacy In New Zealand Education System
Tuesday, 18 June 2024, 11:45 am | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the imposition of ideologically based ‘structured literacy’ into New Zealand’s education system in the context of hegemony and meaning. More >>
Neglect Public Health At New Zealanders’ Peril
Sunday, 16 June 2024, 1:43 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the government’s neglect of public health and the peril this risks for the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders. More >>
How Should New Zealand Respond To The United States’ False Terrorism Accusations
Monday, 3 June 2024, 2:08 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses how the New Zealand government should respond to the hypocrisy of the attempt of the United States to designate Cuba as a supporter of state terrorism. More >>
Health Boss Appointment Could Define Credibility And Direction Of Health System Leadership
Sunday, 26 May 2024, 6:38 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the risks to the direction and credibility of New Zealand’s health system leadership, including the health minister, of a likely pending appointment to a key health boss position. More >>
Health System Synthesis: From Time To Culture, Struggle And Hope
Sunday, 19 May 2024, 3:17 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses a way forward to overcoming New Zealand’s health system crisis through a dialectical lens from time to culture to struggle to hope. More >>
Fishing Exploitation And The Origins Of Capitalism
Thursday, 16 May 2024, 7:53 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell levers off revelations of harmful ocean fishing in New Zealand to discuss the relationship between fishing and the origins of capitalism. More >>
When Health Bosses Operate In An Isolated Bubble
Tuesday, 14 May 2024, 6:43 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the claim that telehealth could reduce up to 50% of GPs work in the context of a leadership bubble created by New Zealand’s highly centralised and vertical health system. More >>
Policy Vacuum Enables For-profit Corporate General Practice Ownership By Stealth
Thursday, 2 May 2024, 4:29 pm | Ian Powell
In 2014 nearly 40% of GP respondents were practice owners. By 2022 it had declined to 31%. The number of GPs working in GP-owned practice has also fallen from 73% in 2015 to 64% in 2022. Partially filling the practice ownership gap is the for-profit ... More >>
Cuba And New Zealand: A Relationship Worthy Of Strengthening
Wednesday, 1 May 2024, 6:00 am | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses building on the constructive relationship between Cuba and New Zealand in the context of the Unites States economic warfare (embargo) against Cuba and the recent UN Rapporteurs findings. More >>
New Hospital Building Trumps ‘Yes Minister’ Hospital Without Patients
Friday, 19 April 2024, 7:05 am | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses how New Zealand’s vertically centralised health system led to a new hospital surgical building without staff and its similarity with the ‘Yes Minister’ comedy and the hospital with no patients. More >>
Reflecting On Maximilien Robespierre And Other Things
Sunday, 14 April 2024, 1:42 pm | Ian Powell
Politics in New Zealand would benefit from a healthy debate on the relationship between class and identity politics. I regard them as interconnected and supplementary rather than opposites. More >>
How To Immobilise A Health System’s Primary Statutory Adviser And Monitor
Thursday, 11 April 2024, 9:15 am | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the immobilising implications of the Government’s severe public service staff cuts for the critical health system functions of the Ministry of Health. More >>
Time For Health Minister To Step Up On Workforce Crisis
Wednesday, 3 April 2024, 8:17 am | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses why and how new health minister Shane Reti needs to step up over resolving the health system’s workforce crisis. More >>
Function Versus Form: Public Service Cuts
Saturday, 30 March 2024, 7:00 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the public service staffing cuts being pushed by the new government in the context of the relationship between function and form along with process improvement. More >>
