Union surveys report IT problems affecting Health NZ patient care

Two union surveys of Health NZ staff have found IT problems affecting patient care, with 77 percent of respondents in one of the surveys saying so. National Party campaign chair Simeon Brown has dismissed the findings as political.

The surveys were run by the Public Service Association, a union, and the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists. The Public Service Association survey was conducted in March and had a response rate of 6.7 percent. The specialists' survey was conducted in September and had a response rate of 13.1 percent. Between them, the two surveys received 2600 responses, according to RNZ.

In the Public Service Association survey, 64 percent of respondents said they had more IT problems in the previous year than the year before. Information released to the union under the Official Information Act, the law that lets people request government-held information, showed that Health NZ facilities averaged more than one priority-one outage per day over the past year. A priority-one outage affects a department, hospital, district or region and involves systems essential for safe care. It causes immediate harm or risk, and there is no safe workaround.

Health NZ reduced its data and digital staff by 39 percent in 2024-25, as part of government public service spending cuts. Health NZ was formed when district health boards combined, and 20 separate IT systems were being merged into one during that process. The union said frontline IT roles fell from at least 166 to 119 during the restructure.

The union report also claimed the average time to fix an IT problem tripled from just over a week to more than three weeks in March. At one point, it said, the backlog of unresolved helpdesk tickets topped 4000.

Simeon Brown, the National Party campaign chair, dismissed the union report as political. He said it was released the day before polls closed and was authorised by a union campaigning to change the government.

Te Whatu Ora, the other name for Health NZ, has said recent IT outages were caused by equipment failure, not cuts to IT staff. It said patient care continued safely during the outages because of strong back-up plans, according to Healthcare IT News.

The Public Service Association has said more outages will happen because of government cuts, according to NZ Doctor.

A 1News Verian poll has found that seven in 10 voters believe New Zealand's public health system is in crisis.