Critics said the high leave balances were a dangerous liability for Health NZ and could give doctors another reason to walk out the door, taking a huge payout with them.
The senior doctor union (ASMS) executive director, Sarah Dalton, said she did not know who the top leave holders were but it was likely leave had built up over many years.
The amount they had accrued was very unusual but, day to day, it was often hard for doctors in small or stretched services to take time off.
Health NZ’s slowness to recruit was making it harder, because some hospital services were not well enough staffed, she said.
A New Zealand health system expert, Professor Robin Gauld, agreed.
“When you’re a very focused doctor and very, very focused on ensuring care is provided, it’s pretty difficult to go on leave for two weeks when you know the service is not going to stand up in your absence,” he said.
Doctors quitting
The union was encouraging doctors to take leave over summer and have a much-needed rest when many services were quieter.
But Dalton said three anaesthetists at an urban hospital had quit because they could not get Christmas leave this year, she said.
Doctors had a tendency to be realistic that they could not always take leave when they wanted.
“Generally, services have pretty good arrangements about how they share [leave] around – and they will get their turn. It’s not unusual for a doctor to get Christmas but not New Year,” she said.
However, many were frustrated at not being able to take their leave and Health NZ did not normally allow them to be paid out for it, she said.
Some were told they could not get leave unless they found their own locum, she said.
Once leave started to accrue in large amounts, it became harder to chip away at.
‘Huge liablity’
Robin Gauld is an executive dean at Bond University in Australia but maintained an honorary role at Otago University.
The large leave balances were a “huge liability” for Health NZ, which would have to pay it out if the doctors decided to leave, he said.
Almost more shocking was the fact that the organisation did not have a full picture of how much it owed staff, he said.
In its reply to RNZ‘s information request, Health NZ said it could not provide all the information – because it was still held in many different systems.
They had been inherited from the old district health boards but had still not been merged.
“I would have thought this is a tremendous risk for Health NZ to be in this situation to not even be able to get a clear understanding of what’s going on in terms of the financial as well as the health and safety liabilites the organisation faces in this regard,” Gauld said.
The senior doctors’ union previously asked Health NZ for data on leave balances by region.
The highest was in Taranaki – where doctors were owed an average of 21 weeks.
Several districts were close to an average of about 11 or 12 weeks, including South Canterbury, Waitematā and Wairarapa.
Health NZ responds
Health NZ’s executive national director of people, culture and health and safety, Robyn Shearer, said it encouraged staff to take leave.
Shearer pointed out that doctors had more leave than people in many other jobs, including six weeks annual leave. Some could qualify for an extra week if they had had an onerous year.
Doctors also got two weeks education leave and access to three months of sabbatical every six years, Shearer said.
However, the union said that leave was part of their job because it was necessary to stay skilled.
The figures in the story relate to annual leave only.
Health NZ said it was trying to make its digital systems better after the amalgamation of 20 district health boards, and that takes time in an organisation of 90,000 people.