Staffing is the most significant issue in New Zealand's healthcare sector according to Health NZ Chair Rob Campbell, as the biggest health reforms in 20 years begin to be rolled out.
Today (Friday), reforms costing half a billion dollars will see the DHBs replaced by Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority. The new entities will be based in Wellington.
Hospitals and other frontline services are groaning under the pressure inflicted by the Covid-19 pandemic, significant staff shortages and a surge of winter illnesses.
"Getting enough staff into the right place, able to work in the right ways, motivated the right way, feeling good about themselves and about the work they do in the system, that's the priority," Campbell told Breakfast.
He said health staff in New Zealand are skilled and dedicated but structures in which they can work effectively need to be created.
"If we can do that then the system will turn around," he said.
Campbell also said New Zealand is competing with other countries who have more money for skilled health professionals.
"Frankly we can't compete just with the money, with the best payer anywhere in the world."
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"What we have to do is make sure we are training and preparing and employing enough people generated here or through migrant schemes to meet the tasks that we have now."
In June, nurses warned that more people will die if staffing issues aren't fixed immediately.
The warning came the day after a patient died at Auckland's Middlemore Hospital after long wait times in the emergency department.
On Tuesday, the nurses union told 1News staff are burnt out and looking for "greener pastures."
Nurses Organisation's kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku said chronic under-staffing in hospitals was affecting nurses as well as all levels of the country's health system.
The Nurses Organisation's Kerri Nuku and Hutt Valley DHB's Dr Richard Stein give a frontline view of the ongoing strain on the health system. (Source: Breakfast)
"The whole entire system is backed up and under this enormous pressure," she said.
"When you fear going to work, because you don't know whether you've got enough staff, you hope and you hold your breath to get through that shift - that's not okay."
READ MORE: Nurses 'holding their breath' to make it through shifts - union
Campbell said one of the biggest jobs Health NZ has is to restore trust.
"We have to make genuine change that staff see and feel and that patients see and feel within the first two years."
"Two years, we don't have long, there's a real urgency about this," he said.
Asked if he think Health NZ will fix the country's health system, Campbell said "we have to."
"It's as simple as that, we have to."
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