Last Friday, Health NZ said the country’s public hospitals have been told to save a total of $NZ105 million by July. The announcement was forced by media leaks revealing that 12 districts had to reduce a collective “overspend” of $80 million...
The fourteen demands include an end to double shifts and limitations on replacing sick staff. Every shift must include two people on annual leave “with minimal backfill,” to force people to use their leave before the end of the financial year. This will reduce the ballooning debt, but without adequate staffing it creates a grave threat to patient safety. Leave is often declined due to a lack of staff to cover...
Christchurch surgeon Professor Frank Frizelle recently told Stuff that the “whole pipeline” is challenged from anaesthetic technicians, to nurses, to operating space and doctors due to chronic underfunding by successive governments. “You can withdraw some services a little bit, [but] at some point you fall off the cliff. That’s where we are now.” he said...
Official figures show that in December 2023, 68,179 people were waiting longer than four months for a first specialist appointment—the number had almost doubled since September 2022—and 30,757 were waiting longer than four months for a procedure. One patient, 72-year-old Bob Menzies from south Auckland, told the New Zealand Herald on Saturday he had been waiting “in absolute agony” for over four years for knee surgery.
ASTMS executive director Sarah Dalton said the cuts will “totally” affect the frontline—already in disarray because of “massive junior doctor gaps.” “While we’re still in a system that’s underfunded, this pressure to make cuts is borderline immoral,” she declared. NZ Nurses Organisation (NZNO) president Anne Daniels told Radio NZ that measures such as clamping down on overtime were “laughable.”
