annual report<\/a> shows of the $538 million underspend in wages, $204 million came from delays to Collective Agreements and lower internal personnel costs.<\/p>\nDalton said cuts to so-called “back office” functions were making it harder for clinical staff to do their jobs.<\/p>\n
“We discovered recently that the restructuring in Data and Digital meant they ended up with 200 fewer staff than they actually need, and they’re still trying to catch up with that.”<\/p>\n
Recruitment freeze is real – Labour<\/p>\n
While Health NZ was already on track for a $200 million deficit this year, it has been asked to find a further $510 million from its operational budget to “re-invest” in patient care.<\/p>\n
Health Minister Simeon Brown said the efficiency targets – which represented between 2-just under 5 percent of the operational budgets of the four regions – would free up cash to meet the government health targets without reducing clinical staff.<\/p>\n
![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4K79423_Image_21_jfif\")
<\/p>\n
\nLabour’s health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone\n<\/p>\n
However, Labour’s health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall said it was hard to see how cutting resources for already stretched services would help patients.<\/p>\n
“New Zealanders are struggling to get healthcare. It would be unbelievable if the government had underspent on health staffing and New Zealanders didn’t get care as a result.”<\/p>\n
Verrall said while the Minister and Health NZ continued to deny there was a hiring freeze, frontline workers were saying the opposite.<\/p>\n
“Every doctor and nurse I talk to says they can’t recruit to roles in their department, or if they do, they face massive delays, and the delays are designed to save costs.”<\/p>\n
The Nurses’ Organisation, which represents about 60,000 nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants, is also going into the new year without a settlement.<\/p>\n
A briefing to the minister in April – released under the Official Information Act – shows each 1 percent increase for senior doctors would cost between $20 million and $30 million.<\/p>\n
However, due to the higher numbers of nurses, each additional 1 percent increase for them would cost taxpayers more than $100 million.<\/p>\n
Health NZ responds<\/p>\n
Health New Zealand said the funding available to settle these collective agreements had not changed in either the 24\/25 or 25\/26 financial years.<\/p>\n
“We remain committed to settling.<\/p>\n
“Performance efficiencies do not impact on the funding available for settlement.”<\/p>\n
The agency continued to “actively recruit” to reduce its reliance on outsourced personnel.<\/p>\n
In the most recent financial year, Health New Zealand increased its clinical workforce by approximately 750 full-time workers.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Health NZ says “performance efficiencies” do not impact on the funding available for settlement. Photo: RNZ Frustrated healthworkers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[48,47,134,527,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-191394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-podcasts","17":"tag-public-radio","18":"tag-radio-new-zealand","19":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}