Unions’ report links digital services cuts to cancelled surgeries and days-long outages

NEWS  - eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth

A new report from two unions directly links cuts to Health New Zealand's digital workforce to cancelled surgeries, days-long system outages and clinicians unable to access basic patient information. 

404: Funding Not Found – Inside the Cuts to Data and Digital at Health New Zealand was jointly produced by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Toi Mata Hauora and the Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi and is based on surveys of and interviews with union members and information from OIA requests. 

Nearly 40 percent of roles were removed from digital services in 2025 and PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons says that over the past two years the union has heard consistently from health workers that IT outages are now all too common. 

"As this report states, cutting 1,000 IT roles and expecting the system to carry on as normal was not just foolish, but actively reckless,” she says. 

ASMS executive director Sarah Dalton says digital systems are acting as a barrier to delivering care and taking time away from patient care on a daily basis. 

Gary Baird, Health New Zealand national director of digital services and technology says the Digital Services changes last year brought previously separate teams together into one national organisation, with a more consistent approach to supporting patient care and health services across the country. 

“We recognised that changes of this scale needed to be carefully managed,” he says. 

“The final structure prioritised critical clinical systems, retained additional operational support, strengthened regional digital leadership, and provided transition support to help maintain patient care and frontline health services.” 

The unions’ report surveyed more than 2,600 health workers and finds that around three quarters of senior doctors and dentists reported difficulties accessing or updating patient notes or histories in the previous three months.  

Sixty three percent said they had difficulties sending, receiving, or reviewing laboratory tests, imaging scans, or blood tests, and just five percent of senior doctors said they had not experienced any IT problems over the same period. 

The report says surgeries have been cancelled because clinicians cannot access patient imaging or laboratory results and on one maternity ward, the system used to record patient information was unavailable for multiple days.  

"When we called IT we were told there is no one on call for that system and we will have to wait for them to return from leave,” a clinician quoted in the report says.  

“This is a health and safety nightmare. We have been unable to correctly handover patient information on multiple occasions due to these crashes." 

Health workers dealing with children at risk reported that IT failures are preventing them from completing basic child protection tasks, including viewing pre-existing alerts, contacting Oranga Tamariki or the Police, and recording risk information that can be seen by other services. 

Digital Services staff are also quoted in the report which one saying they are "fighting to keep old infrastructure up and running”. 

Another describes the problem that often only one person knew about a specific IT system. 

"When they left the organisation, that knowledge went with them. This has caused delays in issue and outage resolution and inability to provide adequate support,” they are quoted as saying. 

The unions say that information released under the OIA since the report's publication shows Health NZ has experienced more than one Priority 1 outage per day on average. 

Baird says the organisation operates thousands of applications across a large and complex health system and technical issues do occur, but the number of outages is broadly comparable with levels seen previously. 

“These are managed according to their severity and potential impact, with the highest-priority incidents receiving an immediate response,” he explains. 

“While outages can be disruptive for clinicians, we have processes in place to help them continue providing patient care while systems are unavailable.” 

Baird says outages can have a range of causes and they 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 says.

If you would like to provide feedback on this news story, please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

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