Clinics cancelled as Waikato hospitals hit by major IT outage

Wednesday, 22 July 2026

Patients have been left waiting, clinics cancelled and operations pushed back after a major IT system failure at Waikato hospitals on Wednesday.

A New Zealand Nurses Organisation delegate said staff had been doing their best to cope during the crash, but said the lost services were essential.

Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora said it was “prioritising urgent care” and confirmed that Waikato, Thames, Te Kūiti, Tokoroa and Taumarunui hospitals had all lost connection.

The crash happened at 10.44am and meant hospital staff could not access booking systems or look up patient information, the nursing delegate said. However, the system was back up and running about 9.15pm.

Speaking about the situation at Waikato Hospital during the outage, the delegate said the hardest hit would be the hospital wards, as they would not be able to see patient medications and the delegate also understood some operations were on hold.

“Clinic-wise, doctors … had to send patients home due to not being able to look up CT scans or ultrasounds or X-rays.

“When your X-rays and your CT scans are on the computer and you don't have a hard copy, then being able to assess a patient, you just can't do that, not safely.”

Staff had been “muddling along” during the outage, hoping the system would be working again soon. A health system could not function without a working IT system, the delegate warned.

They were trying to get by with pen and paper, but while better than nothing, this was far short of what was required.

The crash comes amid Waikato Hospital ED’s ongoing struggle to cope with demand, highlighted when a patient died after an extended wait last month.

“It will be very difficult for ED to function without being able to triage patients,” the delegate said.

The delegate had not heard any details from management about how the hospital planned to cope with the situation, for example by transferring patients.

The last system-wide crash occurred in May 2021 and resulted in major disruption. The 2021 crash was caused by hackers, but the NZNO delegate did not know if this was also the cause of Wednesday’s crash.

The hospital had lost a lot of IT staff, and it was generally difficult to get hold of people to help with system problems, they said.

“The last time I phoned somebody … they were in Christchurch, right, so not on the scene, not in the same vicinity, not even in the building.”

Workers at other healthcare providers in the region were also cut off from the system they used to access public system records, leaving them without patients’ full history and pointing to a potentially widespread outage.

HNZ group director of operations for Waikato Stephanie Doe said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon that a “network connectivity issue” had impacted access to a number of applications.

“It has meant that a number of systems accessed through an offsite data centre are not currently available.

“Where clinical systems are impacted, hospitals are reverting to manual processes to support continuity of care. Hospitals are prioritising urgent care. Patients who have not been contacted should attend their appointments as normal. Any impacted patients will be contacted directly.”

She did not identify the cause of the issue.

“Health NZ is working with the offsite data centre provider to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”

Do you know more? Call the news desk on 07-849-6180 or email fiona.ellis@waikatotimes.co.nz