Health Minister Shane Reti says Labour and its health spokeswoman, Ayesha Verral, are reinventing history to avoid responsibility for their “botched merger” at Te Whatu Ora/Health New Zealand.
Yesterday the government announced the board of Te Whatu Ora would be replaced with a commissioner due to what Reti alleged was mismanagement and a $130m overspend.
The government emphasised frontline healthcare services wouldn’t be adversely affected by changes and the problems of inefficiency lay in back-office bureaucracy and middle management.
RNZ reported Labour’s rejection of the government’s claims and Ayesha Verral said it was “absolutely untrue” and pinned responsibility on the current government.
Reti replied: “Make no mistake, these problems go straight back to Labour.
“When Labour decided to break up the DHBs and reform the health sector in the middle of a pandemic, they were destined to fail, and the situation we are in right now is proof of that,” he said.
National ‘left to do the cleanup’
Reti said the $1.4b deficit at the end of 2024/25 along with the ferries, Te Pūkenga and Kāinga Ora were Labour’s shortcomings and National was “left to do the clean-up job”.
“Labour allowed Health NZ back-office staff to balloon by 2,500 over six years, created up to 14 layers of bureaucracy between the CEO and patients, didn’t have a focus on health targets, and now Ayesha Verrall is falsely claiming that it’s lack of government funding driving the problems,” he says.
“Ayesha Verrall can’t do the maths, and it seems she’s not very good at history either.”
Reti says the failings of Te Whatu Ora reforms are an inconvenient truth for Labour and claims the following timeline backs it up.
Timeline:
- October 2023 – HNZ’s annual report records a $1 billion deficit
- November 2023 – New government sworn in
- December 2023 – Crown observer appointed to help address ministerial concerns
- February 2023 – Office of the Auditor General expresses performance concerns
- February 2024 – Ministerial advisory committee expresses implementation concerns
- Mar 2024 – Health NZ notifies unexpected $100 million deficit for the month
- Mar 2024 – Dr Reti appoints financial expert to HNZ board
- April 2024 – Health NZ notifies another significant deficit
- June 2024 – New chair appointed
- July 2024 – commissioner appointed
Regional approach
Meanwhile, it appears Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora commissioner Professor Lester Levy (previously the chair) is about to de-merge the district health boards that were amalgamated by Labour albeit into regions.
“At the moment, people are having to wait too long for care, and we must do everything within our power to change this.
“Our reset will ensure we bring our decision making closer to the communities where care is being provided. We will achieve this by establishing regional leadership that will have the required level of autonomy to arrange their resources to deliver national health targets and health services more broadly for their populations,” he said
Chief executive Margie Apa said four establishment regional deputy chief executives would be appointed empowered with decision-making authority to organise hospital and specialist services and commissioning teams so decisions were made closer to the point of care.
“It has been a big task to bring so many organisations together as Health NZ but the job is not finished,” Apa said.
“We need to continually work on prioritising our resources within our baseline to where it matters most – supporting frontline care whether we provide or fund it. There is further room for shifting resources to ensure we are as efficient as we can be. We have more work to do to remove duplication, reduce waste and tighten up procurement to ensure we get value.“
