Malcolm Mulholland: Patient Voice Aotearoa chair on Health NZ's billion dollar deficit and

Health New Zealand's pointed to nursing recruitment to explain its ballooning deficit, but health experts aren't buying it.  

Newly released documents show the agency went from expecting a half a billion dollar surplus to a $1.4 billion deficit in April.  

That's now expected to blow out to $1.76 billion.  

Patient Voice Aotearoa chair Malcolm Mulholland told Ryan Bridge there's no way we have too many nurses in New Zealand.  

He says everywhere he goes in the community, people are saying we need more nurses and doctors.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Health New Zealand to FATO orders released around four hundred
pages of financial documents and it details a big turnaround
in March this year. We were expecting a big surplus.
By April a one point four billion dollar deficit. What
on earth went wrong? One bright spot is that overspending
has started to drop, albeit slightly. It was one hundred

(00:21):
and sixty three million dollars in July. It's down to
one hundred and forty nine million dollars for August. Joining
me this morning is Patient Advocate, a chair of Patient
Voice Altier At Malcolm mulholland. Malcolm, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Morning, Ryan.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Are you worried about Health New Zealand's ability to actually count?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yes, I was flabergasted at what was revealed yesterday. To
as you say, go from expecting a half a billion
dollar surplus to one point four billion dollar deficit in
the space of one month, to me, requires a lot
of explaining.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
They have said that they've hired more nurses, more fte
nurses throughout the period and they thought that some would leave,
but they haven't, so they've ended up with more than
they need. Presumably.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, look, I think that's just bulbish. It to be
Frank Ryan, There's no way you can tell me that
we have too many nurses right now in New Zealand.
I mean, I'm doing a roadshow right now visiting communities
talking about healthcare, and they're all telling me we need
more nurses, we need more doctors. You've got masters in
hospital that did a calculation where they believe they are

(01:36):
forty nurses short while a hospital can't even open because
they don't have enough stuff. That tells me that the
FTE number by which Health New Zealand were calculating, you
know what is a good number was far too low
to begin with.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
You're just not buying any of this. I mean, the
bigger problem for me is not necessarily where the spending
has come from, just the fact that they can can't
They didn't identify it, they weren't able to preempt it.
I mean, who is the person control and control of
the purse strings here?

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, look, that's a fantastic Christian and I think that
that's one that definitely requires more investigational questions to be
asked because we just simply do not know. And it's
not good enough that we don't know. We need to know.
Health is the biggest expenditure item of the government. It's
always been like that and it will continue to be

(02:30):
that way. We need to be on top of our
finances when it comes to the New Zealand health system.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Hey, good luck with your rest of your road show, Malcolm.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, thanks that right. I'm looking forward to going to
AMU to madubsh Burton todaily in chrostage tomorrow and you know,
really concerned actually at the state of our health system
right now.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah, drive safe, Malcolm, Thanks so much for your time.
That's Malcolm mulholland. He's the chair of Patient Voice ALTI
at I.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
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Speaker 1 (03:01):
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