Three senior health executives have resigned, including director-general of health Dr Diana Sarfati, who highlighted the “challenge of restricting and unifying an entire health system”.
After years of declining services, longer wait lists and endless excuses, it is time to get our healthcare system refocused on who it is meant to serve: you, the patient.
Earlier this month, I outlined my priorities as Minister of Health and the back-to-basics approach I am expecting from Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand. Our message is simple: no more talk, no more delays, no more bureaucracy getting in the way. We are taking action to ensure every New Zealander, from Cape Rēinga to Bluff, can get the care they need in a timely and quality manner.
When we took office in 2023, we inherited a health system in crisis. The previous government launched a massive restructure in the middle of a pandemic and scrapped the health targets that kept hospitals accountable. Despite record spending, the result was a system tangled in red tape, leaving health officials stuck in meetings while patients languished.
By late 2023, over 40% of adults who needed an appointment with a GP couldn’t get one within a week. Hospital wait lists exploded: in 2017, just over 1000 people waited more than four months for treatment, but by the time Labour left office, that number had swelled to nearly 28,000. This is the grim reality for too many families.
Doctors, nurses and health professionals have expressed their frustration, too. The system had become desensitised to patients, focusing too much on what the unions, medical colleges and lobby groups had to say instead of the people who need care. In healthcare, the customer is the patient: the mum with a newborn, the tradie, the kaumātua, the grandmother.
This Government has set out to refocus the health system on the patient while providing record investment. We are spending more on health than ever with the health budget now at $30 billion per year, nurses are being paid the same in NZ as in New South Wales, and we have record numbers of health professionals employed by Health NZ.
Yes there will always be a need for more money, but more money isn’t the only answer. We need the system to be delivering more and focused on outcomes. Our plan is simple: get back to basics, put patients first, and demand results. That is why we immediately restored the health targets Labour had abolished – because what gets measured gets done.
We are now focused on further actions to ensure we can provide timely and quality healthcare for New Zealanders.
Investing in primary care
We’re giving primary care a record investment. An extra $285 million is being injected into GP services on top of the annual uplift in funding they receive. This means your local doctors will be incentivised to have more appointments and provide more services so fewer people end up in overcrowded emergency departments.
We’re expanding the workforce by recruiting hundreds more GPs and nurses across the country. To make access easier, we’re launching a 24/7 digital health service so you can consult a doctor online anytime, anywhere. These changes will provide another choice for Kiwi families to access healthcare services.
Clearing the elective surgery backlog
We are boosting elective surgeries and partnering with private hospitals to use every available operating theatre. Over 10,000 extra procedures will be carried out by mid-year – thousands of people who will be relieved of pain and able to return to living their lives.
This is just the start. We’re locking in long-term agreements with private providers to make sure wait lists never spiral out of control again. New Zealanders don’t care who performs the operation, only that it’s done quickly and safely.
Modernising hospitals and clinics
You can’t deliver 21st-century healthcare in crumbling 20th-century facilities. That’s why we’re upgrading hospitals and clinics across New Zealand after years of neglect. Right now, $6.3b worth of infrastructure projects are under way – new hospitals, modern cancer treatment centres and expanded capacity at Middlemore and Christchurch Hospital. These upgrades will benefit Kiwi patients for decades.
Health Minister Simeon Brown was appointed to the role in January. Photo / Mark Mitchell
New Zealand already invests $30b of taxpayers’ hard-earned money into the public health system each year. This Government has increased this funding by $16.68b over three years to meet growing demand.
While there will always be a need for more funding in health – and I will continue to fight every day for additional investment – the real focus must be on how we spend the $30b already committed. Every single dollar must be spent effectively, on what matters most: front-line care. We must ensure money flows directly to where it matters: putting patients first and delivering timely, high-quality care.
Restoring accountability and trust
Under Labour, health targets were scrapped and a one-size-fits-all bureaucracy took control. We’ve fixed that: health targets are back so every hospital’s performance is visible to the public. We are also restoring local leadership. Decisions now come from district-level staff who are empowered to shape services in their own communities.
We’ve cut wasteful spending and put those dollars into hiring more nurses and doctors on the front line.
New Zealanders can already feel the change. For the first time in years, the focus is back on patients, not bureaucracy. There’s still a long road ahead – decades of challenges won’t vanish overnight – but this is just the beginning, and we will not stop until every Kiwi gets the care they deserve.
