Hospitals ‘in dire need of doctors’ new data shows

Tuesday, 20 May 2025

New data reveals hospitals nationwide are grappling with critical doctor shortages, forcing reliance on locums to cover large portions of rosters. Some facilities face vacancy rates over 40%, with rural hospitals hardest hit.

Our hospitals are haemorrhaging doctors and a network of over‑stretched locums has become the new normal way to staff them, according to new data obtained by Stuff.

It lays bare yawning staffing gaps in every region where burnt‑out specialists warn nothing will change until Kiwi pay packets and working conditions catch up to other countries.

Gisborne Hospital is short 44% of its doctors - almost half of the doctors it needs.

“Our hospitals are in dire need of doctors. We are now seeing hospitals close and doctorless hospitals in New Zealand,” says Health Advocate Malcolm Mulholland.

In the Wairarapa Emergency Department locums have become the backbone of the service.

“About 70% of our shifts every week at the senior specialist level are filled by locums,” says Norman Gray, Wairarapa ED clinical lead.

Norman Gray, the Wairarapa Hospital ED clinical lead, said around 70 percent of senior specialist shifts every week are filled by locums.

Those shortages are playing out nationwide.

“We’re about 2,000 specialists minimum short and a third of our graduates end up working overseas,” Gray adds.

Shortages once unthinkable have become normal, he warns.

“It’s now the norm just like once upon a time you didn’t have such long wait times and you didn’t have ambulance ramping. But these things slowly creep into the system and eventually you think it’s normal.”

Figures from Patient Voice Aotearoa show how extreme the crisis is. Gisborne leads the country with a 44% vacancy rate, while Southland sits at 18%.

Several rural hospitals including Dargaville, Bay of Islands, Ashburton and Gore are officially “open to availability,” meaning they urgently need one or more locums.

Emergency departments in Gisborne, Whanganui and Southland are in the same category.

Whakatāne needs 71 ED shifts covered over three months, with Masterton, Greymouth, Blenheim and Timaru also facing high locum demand.

“The answer is to pay our doctors more. We can’t compete again on the international market and because of that, we’re not attracting doctors to New Zealand,” says Malcolm Mulholland.

Gray points across the Tasman for contrast.

“Australia is about double the remuneration. It’s not just remuneration, but it’s also the work conditions. So, if you’re short staffed, you’re always going to be under the pump and work becomes less rewarding. And as a system implodes, it collapses like a deck of cards. So, here in the last 10 years, I’ve seen loss of radiology, psychiatry, and last of all, the most important was orthopaedics here recently.”

The Government has just announced more funding to expand after‑hours and emergency care across the country and plans to recruit and train more staff.

Health Minister Simeon Brown says they’re investing money and resource into training more doctors.

Health Minister Simeon Brown insists they’re addressing the problem. “We’re investing a lot of money, a lot of resource into training more doctors so we have access to those critically important services whether it’s in rural communities or urban communities so they have those services.”

But critics remain unconvinced.

“I struggle to see how it’s going to happen. You can’t just magic up doctors to staff after hours surgeries,” warns Mulholland.

Gray says it’s not addressing the core issues. “And the core issue is staffing. And the only way to have staff is to have good work conditions, especially when there are better work conditions just over the ditch.”

He says doctors are not only working long hours but understaffing means those hours have become far more intense.