The health merger has meant less transparency

Shane Reti points out:

HealthNZ is now apparently unable to report on staff vacancies in emergency departments, National’s Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti says.

“New Zealand is facing a workforce shortage, and it is one of the most important issues facing the health sector right now. It is simply not credible that HealthNZ do not know how many emergency department staff vacancies there currently are.

“Late last year, the previous Health Minister was able to send a detailed breakdown of staff vacancies at every single emergency department. But recently HealthNZ through the current Health Minister effectively said they do not have the data.

“None of this makes sense. According to this Labour Government one of the key factors of creating the health restructure was to centralise data and decision making. After spending half a billion dollars, key data is suddenly nowhere to be found.

It is bizarre. The data should, in theory, now be able to be collated by one person, not 23 people. Yet under the old system we could find out this health data, and under this new expensive system, we can’t.