HealthNZ is now apparently unable to report on staff vacancies in emergency departments, National’s Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti says.

“New Zealand is facing a workforce shortage, and it is one of the most important issues facing the health sector right now. It is simply not credible that HealthNZ do not know how many emergency department staff vacancies there currently are.

“Late last year, the previous Health Minister was able to send a detailed breakdown of staff vacancies at every single emergency department. But recently HealthNZ through the current Health Minister effectively said they do not have the data.

“None of this makes sense. According to this Labour Government one of the key factors of creating the health restructure was to centralise data and decision making. After spending half a billion dollars, key data is suddenly nowhere to be found.

“This month it was revealed that HealthNZ were publishing incorrect emergency department wait times. Now they are denying they have access to key vacancy data.

“If Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall does not know how many emergency department staff shortages there are, then it calls into question the reason for the bureaucratic health restructure.

“A National Government would not allow this to happen because we would hold ourselves accountable to publicly report data – including emergency department wait times and staff shortages. We would also redirect health restructure waste into building the health workforce and investing in our frontline instead of bureaucrats.”

Link to 2022 Parliamentary Written Question with vacancy data

Link to 2023 Parliamentary Written Question denying the data 

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