Source: PSA
A major new survey of health professionals has confirmed what the PSA has been saying for more than a year: the Government’s reckless cuts to digital services are destroying confidence in the health system’s ability to deliver safe, modern care.
The Korero Mai report from Health Informatics NZ, based on conversations with more than 200 clinicians, administrators, technologists and other experts, found trust in digital health transformation is eroding because the workforce is exhausted by change that repeatedly fails to deliver.
“This is a damning indictment of the Government’s approach to health IT. The health workers on the frontline are tired of being promised transformation only to watch systems get mothballed, budgets slashed and the experts who maintain critical infrastructure shown the door,” said Fleur Fitzsimons, National Secretary for the Public Service Association Te Pukenga Here Tikanga Mahi.
“This ultimately impacts patient care which is what we have been warning all along. You can’t slash Health NZ’s Digital Services workforce and still expect clinicians to deliver the safe and timely health care 24/7 that patients need.”
The Digital Services workforce has been reduced by nearly 1000 roles by the Coalition Government with $100m slashed from its budget.
The report lays out the concerns of health workers loud and clear.
‘Participants stressed that digital transformation is not a cost-saving exercise in the short term but requires sustained investment in people: This involves training, change management and roles dedicated to making systems work in practice,’ the report says. It notes reductions in digital service roles have left fewer people available to train, support and optimise systems.
“The Government ignored every warning. Now we have repeated outages across the country, hospitals reduced to whiteboards and paper forms during outages, and a workforce that has lost faith the system will ever be properly resourced.
“This survey confirms what digital services experts have been telling us. The problem is not skills. Health workers have the capability to use modern systems. The problem is that systems keep being pulled out from under them, budgets keep being cut and the people who keep things running keep being made redundant.”
“The Government cannot announce a 10-year digital health investment plan on one hand and gut the workforce needed to deliver it with the other. You can’t modernise a health system on the cheap.
“Documents the PSA obtained under the OIA showed Health NZ knew last year that cutting digital roles would increase risks to patient care and hospital resilience. That internal assessment warned risks would become unsustainable as technical debt mounted. The outages that followed proved it.
“They were the predictable consequence of a government that chose tax cuts for landlords over functioning hospital systems.
“Our members who work in health IT are dedicated professionals who have been keeping an ageing, fragile patchwork of systems running against the odds. They deserve investment and support, not redundancy notices.
“The Government needs to stop pretending it can cut its way to a modern health system. It must reverse the damage, rebuild the digital workforce and properly fund the infrastructure New Zealanders’ lives depend on.”
Recent PSA statements
The Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi is Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest trade union, representing and supporting more than 95,000 workers across central government, state-owned enterprises, local councils, health boards and community groups.
