Statement attributable to Margie Apa, Chief Executive Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora
Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has today released its Workforce Plan for the next three years with a focus on changing how we deliver care and improving supply of health professionals.
People are at the heart of what we do. Our health workforce goes to extraordinary lengths to deliver care to thousands of New Zealanders every day, across a multitude of settings.
We must get our workforce right sized and support it as best we can, if we’re to achieve our targets for the health system.
Today’s plan lays out a series of actions we will take to achieve our aspirations for the health system.
The plan considers some of the health system challenges that are being seen the world over, including an ageing population, more complex health conditions and the need for change in the way health systems must work to remain sustainable and affordable.
It identifies two key areas where Health NZ will focus its efforts in order to address our workforce shortages, they are:
- Changing how we deliver care, through shifting to new models of care and service delivery approaches,
- Improving supply by training more health workers locally, getting better at recruiting from overseas, and doing more to retain our people.
I am grateful for the collaboration and contribution of the range of voices which have contributed to the plan, including unions and our clinical leaders.
This is a roadmap for how we as a country can achieve the best possible health outcomes for all who live here and is an important step toward addressing our current health crisis.
We, cannot deliver on this plan on our own. Our health system is diverse and distributed, and extensive planning, cooperation and alignment with the education sector, unions, regulators, peak bodies, communities, other government departments and, critically, the trust and confidence of patients and their families are vital components in achieving this ambitious plan.
I am confident that this plan is achievable and that through hard work, co-operation, and innovation we can start seeing improvements in our health workforce over the next three years.
The Health Workforce Plan can be found here:
A plan to address issues in our mental health and addiction workforce was released in September and can be found here: