She said the non-clinical staff such as IT experts and administrators were still desperately needed in the public health system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve lost administrators, we\u2019ve lost IT experts, we\u2019ve lost analysts, we\u2019ve lost people that support training of health professionals \u2013 all people who played a critical role in our health system, who have more to give and who will be missed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fitzsimmons said the $58m in payouts was a \u201cdisgraceful waste of public money\u201d that will have \u201ccosts on our health system for years to come\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said the redundancies were forced on Health NZ by government cuts, citing major cuts in the agency\u2019s IT department last year as one example.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day, we\u2019ll see the cost of these departures in IT failures, in longer waiting lists, and in clinicians needing to do more of their own administrative and clerical work at the expense of seeing patients.\u201d<\/p>\n
Health Minister Simeon Brown said the Government\u2019s priority was ensuring more resources are directed to frontline care, rather than \u201cback-office bureaucracy\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said fewer New Zealanders were waiting for elective surgery or a first specialist assessment than at the start of last year and emergency department wait times are improving, along with childhood immunisation rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis progress is being supported by significant workforce growth, including around 2000 additional nurses and hundreds more doctors employed by Health New Zealand since 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Health NZ spokesperson said voluntary redundancy was a choice staff could make based on their own circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cChanges that have been made within Health NZ are part of an ongoing effort toward a more sustainable future for healthcare.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to ensure our resources and people are organised to strengthen and support the front line so more New Zealanders get the right healthcare when and where they need it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said the non-clinical staff such as IT experts and administrators were still desperately needed in the public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[141529,22191,42,134,300,43,3272,39995,1118,131770,5679,4147,40,38,41,39,25361],"class_list":{"0":"post-297369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-disgraceful","9":"tag-ellen","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-money","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-nzs","15":"tag-odwyer","16":"tag-of","17":"tag-payouts","18":"tag-psa","19":"tag-redundancy","20":"tag-top-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topnews","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-waste"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297369","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=297369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}