Health workers are reporting worsening IT failures across New Zealand’s public health system, with a newly released union report linking delays to patient care, cancelled surgeries and difficulties accessing clinical records to the loss of nearly 1000 digital services roles at Health New Zealand.
The joint report from the Public Service Association (PSA) and Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) found 77 per cent of surveyed PSA members working at Health NZ believed IT problems were affecting patient care, while 74 per cent of senior doctors and dentists reported difficulties accessing or updating patient records.
Health NZ has acknowledged that technical issues occur across its large and complex IT environment, telling Pulse+IT it is working to improve system stability, incident response and digital support for frontline staff.
The report, 404: Funding Not Found – Inside the Cuts to Data and Digital at Health New Zealand, draws on surveys of more than 2600 health workers, interviews and information obtained under the Official Information Act.
It notes that the disestablishment of 945 Digital Services roles in 2025, representing 39 per cent of the workforce, has left the organisation struggling to maintain essential systems and respond to outages.
Health NZ National Director, Digital Services and Technology, Gary Baird. Image supplied.
Health NZ national director of digital services and technology Gary Baird said the agency’s priority was providing reliable services while modernising its technology infrastructure.
“Health NZ’s focus is on providing safe, stable and reliable digital services today, while modernising our technology environment for the future,” Mr Baird told Pulse+IT.
“We operate thousands of applications across a large and complex health system. Technical issues do occur, and these are managed according to their severity and potential impact, with the highest-priority incidents receiving an immediate response.”
The unions said information obtained under the OIA showed Health NZ had experienced more than one priority-one IT outage a day on average. Such incidents involve significant disruption to systems supporting clinical care or other essential services.
The report details problems ranging from clinicians being unable to access patient imaging and laboratory results to maternity staff losing access to systems used to record patient information.
In one example, a Waikato anaesthetist reported surgeries being cancelled because imaging and laboratory results were unavailable.
Health workers involved in child protection also reported being unable to view or record alerts about children at risk, or share relevant information with other health services.
A worker quoted in the report said: “We are unable to load notes about clients which can cause risky situations if the client is at risk as it cannot be passed onto other departments such as the emergency department and the emergency mental health team.”
The report found 63 per cent of surveyed senior doctors and dentists had experienced difficulties sending, receiving or reviewing laboratory tests, imaging scans or blood tests during the previous three months.
Only five per cent reported experiencing no IT problems during that period.
PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons. Image supplied.
PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said the findings showed the consequences of reducing the digital workforce while health services remained dependent on ageing systems.
“Over the past two years, we’ve heard again and again from health workers that IT outages are all too common – sometimes even for essential applications like those that record patient notes and send test results between units,” Ms Fitzsimons said.
“As this report states, cutting 1000 IT roles and expecting the system to carry on as normal was not just foolish, but actively reckless.”
IT support delays triple
The report also raises concerns about the time taken to resolve IT problems following Health NZ’s move from district-based support to regional service desks in February 2026.
According to information obtained by the unions, average resolution times increased from just over a week before the transition to more than three weeks by mid-March.
The number of tickets open for longer than a week increased from approximately 1000 to more than 2000 by 23 February, with the backlog subsequently exceeding 4000.
The report said service desk staffing had been reduced from at least 166 positions to 119 under the restructure, with further reductions resulting from recruitment restrictions.
It also found that regional support staff often lacked access to systems used in other districts, requiring requests to be passed to local teams rather than resolved immediately.
One Digital Services worker reported that a proposed tool to allow service desk staff to handle basic support requests across the country had still not been rolled out to the service desk by mid-October.
The worker said some password resets and account unlock requests were being passed to local teams and left unresolved for seven days or longer.
Clinicians also described losing time that would otherwise have been spent treating patients.
A community oral health worker said problems that previously took 20 minutes to resolve could now take two hours, while a respiratory specialist reported losing eight hours of clinical time trying to fix computer problems.
ASMS executive director Sarah Dalton. Image supplied.
ASMS executive director Sarah Dalton said clinicians were increasingly having to compensate for shortcomings in IT support.
“Senior doctors and dentists are over having to cover for the shortcomings in Health NZ’s IT investment,” Ms Dalton said.
“Every day they find digital systems acting as a barrier to delivering care and taking real time away from patient care.”
Health NZ points to digital investment plan
Mr Baird said Health NZ was working to strengthen its response to IT incidents and better understand their impact on health services.
“We are working to improve system stability, incident response and the experience of people seeking digital support. We are also strengthening how we measure service performance and understand the effect of digital incidents on health services.”
He pointed to the Health Digital Investment Plan (HDIP), which sets out a programme of technology modernisation across the health system.
“The Health Digital Investment Plan provides a clear direction for modernisation. Major investments are progressing across radiology, clinical desktop technology, cloud infrastructure and national corporate systems. This work will strengthen resilience, reduce fragmentation and provide more consistent digital services for clinical and frontline staff.”
The unions’ report also cites a Health NZ Clinical Quality and Safety Committee assessment from April 2025, which warned that the proposed Digital Services restructure would increase clinical and operational risks without targeted mitigation.
The assessment stated that the changes would “materially impact patient care and operational resilience”.
The report argues that the reduction in specialist staff has compounded existing problems with ageing infrastructure and fragmented systems inherited from the former district health boards.
Mr Baird acknowledged the work of Health NZ’s remaining digital workforce.
“We are proud of the work our Digital Services teams do every day to support clinical and frontline staff and the care they provide to patients.”
The unions are calling for the Government to reconsider its approach to funding digital services, arguing that the loss of specialist expertise and longer support delays are undermining both patient care and efforts to modernise the health system.
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