Tell us a little about yourself?

I am on secondment from Te Hiringa Hauora / Health Promotion Agency where I was General Manager Corporate Services. I have over 20 years’ experience as a chartered accountant working in a range of different roles and environments in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. 

Photo of Lucy Hickman

Lucy Hickman

Within the health sector I’ve held leadership roles at Physiotherapy NZ and governance roles at Whānau Āwhina Plunket and the New Zealand College of Midwives.

What’s your role as part of the health reform?

I am leading the transition of corporate functions from entities that will be disestablished and incorporated into Health New Zealand. Our focus is on preparing for stand-up on Day 1, which will be 1 July 2022.

There are different workstreams within the team, each with a different lead that has expert insight into the area. This includes Rosalie Percival leading the finance workstream, Shayne Tong leading on corporate ICT and Mel Dooney leading on Human Resources. My role within this team is to ensure a coordinated plan for Day 1.

What are you working on at the moment?

As a first step, we have been working on a current state analysis of the corporate functions to understand what is currently happening in the system – this is an important part of the process to inform our planning for Day 1.

To do this we’re working closely with the health sector including regular fortnightly meetings with the Lead DHB CE group and our networks with the health sector through the workstream leads.

While we are not expecting much to change for Day 1, we need to get a good understanding of what is happening across the agencies to ensure that Day 1 will work smoothly with no interruption to service delivery. For example, we need to ensure that our people, suppliers and contractors continue to get paid.

We are mapping our user journeys to be clear where a process has or hasn’t changed and identify any areas that are causing issues, and how we might be able to address those issues to be ready for Day 1.

We are expecting to work with the health sector over the next five months to develop our Day 1 approach.

What happens next?

We’ll present recommendations to the Board of interim Health New Zealand by March 2022. We will then be able to communicate to the sector what the approach will be for Day 1, including any changes and how we might plan for those changes – we know it is top of mind for those in the health sector.

What is your advice to the health sector?

Keep doing what you are doing. Your roles are all important through these reforms and we need you to continue doing the great work you do.

Back to the news

Last modified: