“The clinical frontline is key to helping ensure faster and easier access to healthcare for people, wherever they live. The clinical frontline will not be cut or reduced, and our plans are to strengthen it.
“We do of course have a serious financial problem and as part of our reset at Health NZ we need to make sure we live within budget, but not at the expense of the clinical frontline.
“These staff play a critical and valued role in lifting productivity to better respond to acute care demand and deliver more planned care. We know that’s what New Zealanders expect and need us to do.”
Sarah Dalton, executive director of the doctors and dentists union the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS), said it was great that Levy had committed to keeping staff.
“But we need investment and open discussions, that are clinically led.”
Levy, a former district health board chief, was appointed as commissioner of Health NZ-Te Whatu Ora in July, after the Government sacked the remaining members of the Health NZ board.
He is a qualified medical doctor and is the professor of digital health leadership at the Auckland University of Technology.
He had been appointed to chair the board of Health NZ in May, but after the board was sacked by the government Levy was appointed as sole commissioner for 12 months.
Levy has been tasked with finding $1.4 billion in savings while also improving services and meeting the Government’s national health targets.
Since April, Health NZ has placed significant restrictions on recruitment. While it has denied a hiring freeze on front-line workers, many parts of the sector have said the restrictions were effectively a freeze and were preventing key roles from being filled.
Levy has previously identified shorter wait times for treatment as his top priority, and has said this can be done with existing health funding.
The latest quarterly performance report by Health NZ, for the quarter ending March 31 2024, revealed another increase in the number of people waiting more than 4 months (the point at which a person is considered overdue) for both a first specialist appointment or procedure - that group numbered 112,000.
In appointing Levy as commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti blamed the previous government’s “mismanaged health reforms, which resulted in an overly centralised operating model, limited oversight of financial and non-financial performance, and fragmented administrative data systems which were unable to identify risks until it was too late”.
Labour’s health spokeswoman, Dr Ayesha Verrall, the former Health Minister, has said the previous government was not to blame for Health NZ’s deficits.
Verrall said the Government did not put enough money into health in this year’s Budget. The Government’s $1.4b top-up did not take into account updated figures on demographic changes, she said.
Nicholas Jones is an investigative reporter at the Herald. He was a finalist for Reporter of the Year at the 2024 Voyager Media Awards, and has won numerous national media awards for his reporting and feature writing.