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New Zealand's largest trade union has blamed the government's IT staffing and funding cuts anew for a recent major IT outage across hospitals in the northern region, while Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand said the event was caused by "equipment failure."
On 28 January, public hospitals in Te Tai Tokerau, Waitematā, Auckland, and Counties Manukau encountered IT outages that lasted more than 12 hours.
The Public Service Association (PSA) noted that the event took down "all ED, laboratory and inpatient systems," forcing nurses and doctors to use paper-based systems and whiteboards. It also kept clinicians from accessing key patient information and communicating internally and across the region, the union added.
"The government has to take the blame for this – these failures are a direct result of its short-sighted decision to underfund and cut roles at Health NZ's digital services team," said Public Service Association national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons in a statement the following day.
On Friday, Te Whatu Ora confirmed that the IT outage was caused by an issue with part of the network infrastructure at one of its data centres; systems have since been restored.
THE LARGER CONTEXT
Darren Douglass, Te Whatu Ora's acting chief IT officer, emphasised in a statement that "there is no link between IT outages in recent weeks and staffing numbers in the Digital Services team at Health New Zealand."
"We do experience technical issues from time to time," he said. "This includes the recent IT outages where, thanks to strong back-up plans, patient care continued safely."
"All but one of the outages this [January] have been due to third-party vendor issues."
The PSA noted similar IT outages at South Island hospitals earlier last month, as well as a recent patient portal failure at Wellington Hospital.
These outages also followed a major cyberattack on the patient portal Manage My Health late last year, which compromised the data of up to 126,000 people.
In Parliament early last week, the Ministry of Health was once again scrutinised for slashing data and digital jobs and funding since 2024, allegedly leaving the health system's IT security more vulnerable.
To recall, it took back four years' worth of funding, or around $200 million, from digital projects, including the now-paused flagship national health information sharing program, Hira. Te Whatu Ora also initially proposed axing nearly a third of data and digital positions, though it ultimately decided to retain 1,460 out of 1,938 roles nationally last year. It was taken to the Employment Relations Authority by the PSA last year, which claimed that its proposed lay-offs were a "huge gamble with patient privacy and safety."
"Since we became a single health organisation, we have been working hard to rationalise and modernise our systems, improve the quality of our data and digital platforms and ensure that they connect across the country to support and enhance healthcare delivery," Douglass explained in a recent statement.
In November, the MOH announced its first 10-year Health Digital Investment Plan, with digital infrastructure and cybersecurity among its 10 priority investments.
