Hospitals in north and West Auckland have had to postpone non-urgent surgery to cope with the winter's first surge of acutely unwell patients.

District health boards that do heart surgery cannot produce reliable comparisons of individual surgeons' patient complication and death rates.

The rules restricting enrolment of unconscious patients in drug trials without their prior consent will be reviewed - more than seven months after an outcry.

Pies are expected to be cut from public menus at the Auckland District Health Board as officials try to make their hospitals into models of healthy eating and drinking.

The national organ donation service at the Auckland DHB has been put on notice by an official-information watchdog after it was caught out deleting public records.

The noise from major construction is upsetting patients at Auckland City Hospital, who are being offered earplugs to block out the banging and crashing.

Nearly one in three bags containing human body parts taken during healthcare procedures have leaked on their way to disposal.

Diagnostic Medlab will have just one laboratory, Medlab Central, in Palmerston North. The long-established Auckland community laboratory that lost most of its state funding in a contracting wrangle will close next year.

One person has been injured after an explosion in a lift in the Westpac building on lower Queen St in downtown Auckland this morning.

A man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia tried to kill his brother-in-law days after being released from a mental health unit at Auckland Hospital.

Auckland District Health Board staff have blundered by sending a journalist an envelope filled with personal information and are now apologising to the people involved.

A health authority has taken charge of an Auckland rest home after planning and management failings amounting to "evidence of neglect".

The widow of a man who died of a heart attack while on the Auckland DHB waiting list for treatment is unconvinced the board has changed enough to avoid similar occurrences.

A threat to ban smokers from Auckland's top DHB splits nzherald readers.

North Island hospitals are receiving Christchurch earthquake victims and plan to send specialists to help in the devastated city.

Nurses have resorted to wearing human flea collars on their ankles to protect against an infestation of the biting insects at Auckland hospitals, brought in by patients who own pets.