Ombudsman raps Health NZ over secret nurse staffing data
Monday, 1 September 2025
Join the discussion and have your say in the comments.
Health NZ has been ordered to apologise after the Ombudsman found it acted unreasonably and unlawfully in withholding data that shows more than a third of all public hospital shifts last year were understaffed.
Figures show that 38% of shifts were short-staffed in 2022, 40% in 2023, and 37% between January and November 2024 – including more than half of all day shifts.
In some wards, staffing fell short of safe levels – where demand for care exceeds the nurses available to provide it –on more than 90% of shifts.
The findings contradict Health NZ’s public statements. Last April, the agency partially blamed a forecast $1.7 billion deficit on “over-recruiting” nurses.
The Care Capacity Demand Management System calculates the number of nurses needed in each ward based on how sick patients are and the levels of care required.
In March 2024, the agency reported it was 2079 nursing full-time equivalents (FTE) “ahead of budget”, blaming “unbudgeted CCDM costs”.
Then-Health Commissioner (now board chair) Lester Levy later said 3000 nurses had been hired beyond budgeted numbers.
Health NZ began imposing tighter cost controls, including a pause on recruitment through the CCDM system.
Meanwhile, nurses reported that vacancies were going unfilled, graduates were struggling to find work, and unsafe staffing continued to put patients at risk.
Last year, a coroner ruled that the “preventable” death in 2023 of a woman at Waikato Hospital’s emergency department occurred while the ED was five nurses short.
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation’s (NZNO) says that while the agency claimed to be “overstaffed”, the CCDM data shows hospitals were chronically short of nurses.
“It’s gaslighting,” strategic researcher Nathalie Jaques told The Post. “Nurses are holding wards together under impossible conditions, only to be told there are too many of them.”
The union had to fight for a year to get the data released.
Chief Ombudsman John Allen said Health NZ had no grounds to refuse NZNO’s Official Information Act request for the CCDM data.
He found the agency repeatedly delayed and obstructed the April 2024 request, wrongly claimed it had made a decision when it had not, and then unlawfully withheld the information on the basis it might prejudice pay negotiations with the union.
Allen described the refusal as “unreasonable” and recommended Health NZ formally apologise to the union.
Jacques said the data proved that Health NZ chose to frame the deficit as an overstaffing problem when the data showed it was a funding problem.
Nurses are preparing to strike on Tuesday and Thursday this week - from 7am to 11pm - over safe staffing, demanding an enforceable mechanism to ensure nurse-to-patient ratios.
Nurses were offered a 3% pay increase, rolled out over two years, alongside two lump sum payments of $350. But the union says this wage increase doesn’t meet cost of living increases for their members.
Health NZ says the strike plans would cause the postponement of more than 2200 planned procedures, 3600 first specialist appointments and 8000 follow-up appointments.
Health NZ’s Executive National Director – Clinical, Dr Richard Sullivan, said “shifts below target” was a “moment in time” operational measure and not a direct proxy for unsafe staffing.
He said the data needed to be interpreted alongside other factors such as skill mix, clinical judgment and patient outcomes.
“Using this data in isolation to claim that wards are under-staffed and unsafe is misleading,” Sullivan said.
He pointed to stable or improving patient safety indicators such as in-hospital deaths, surgical site infections and falls.
Sullivan said nurse numbers have risen by more than 3000 FTE in the past two years, with turnover dropping from 13.3% to 8.1%. “There are now more nurses working in our hospitals than ever before,” he said.
Sullivan did not address the Ombudsman’s ruling.
Comments are moderated during working hours and may not appear immediately.