A major IT outage forced hospitals across Auckland and Northland to resort to pen and paper overnight, with New Zealand’s largest trade union placing the blame on the Government’s underfunding of Health NZ’s digital services team.
The Public Service Association (PSA) said the outage lasted for more than 12 hours from late yesterday, taking down “all ED, laboratory and inpatient systems”.
“This forced nurses and doctors to resort to manual backups, nurses to take on admin tasks, creating chaos in EDs and other departments.
“The outage prevented clinicians accessing key patient information and communicating internally and across the region, slowing down decision-making on patient care.”
Widespread IT outage forces multiple hospitals back to pen and paper – Watch on TVNZ+
However, Health NZ maintained that the affected hospitals and emergency departments “remained open and patient care continued safely during the incident”. A spokesperson also confirmed the outage was not as a result of a cyber attack.
There was also an outage at South Island hospitals last week and the failure of the patient portal at Wellington Hospital late last year.
“The Government has to take the blame for this – these failures are a direct result of its short-sighted decision to underfund and cut roles at Health NZ’s digital services team,” said Fleur Fitzsimons, National Secretary for the PSA.
“The Government oversaw the loss of the very experts who maintain and upgrade these critical systems, and now we’re seeing the predictable consequences – hospitals forced onto whiteboards and paper forms while trying to deliver modern healthcare.”
‘No link’ between outages and staff numbers – Health NZ
The Public Service Association says the 12-hour breakage had potentially deadly consequences. (Source: 1News)
In a statement this evening, Health NZ acting chief information technology officer – digital services Darren Douglass told 1News there was “no link between IT outages in recent weeks and staffing numbers in the Digital Services team at Health New Zealand”.
“All but one of the outages this month have been due to third party vendor issues,” Douglass said.
“We operate a very complex technology environment, and we have monitoring and support in place across the system.
“We do experience technical issues from time to time. This includes the recent IT outages where thanks to strong back-up plans, patient care continued safely.”
He said a 10-year Digital Investment Plan, announced in November and approved by Cabinet, was in place to “move to a modern, unified, and resilient digital health system”.
“While we continue to improve and modernise our technology environment patient safety remains our priority. Our hospitals have contingency plans in place to ensure the delivery of safe patient care during an IT outage.”
‘Gaps being laid bare in the system’
Patient Elinor Kennedy was at Auckland Hospital ED last night when the systems crashed forcing her and others to wait hours to be triaged.
“It was way more chaotic than even an ED should be.”
Kennedy said one triage nurse was having to transcribe all of her notes by hand as the ED filled up around her, “well past the point of overflowing”.
“Lab results couldn’t be emailed to ED, so communication with labs was entirely reliant on phone communication.”
She added that there not enough administration staff, meaning nurses “had to fill in to support with administration tasks instead of their clinical duties”.
“The nursing and administration staff showed amazing resilience under enormous pressure but were clearly frustrated at the gaps being laid bare in the system.”
The PSA called on the Government to immediately review its funding for health digital services and IT infrastructure; admit its mistakes in cutting digital services expertise; and commit to properly resourcing IT system upgrades and maintenance.
The union also called for Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster to widen his investigation into the ManageMyHealth cyber-attack to include a comprehensive review of the vulnerability of public health IT systems which held sensitive patient information.
“When clinical systems fail, patient safety is at risk. Doctors and nurses are doing their best with manual systems, but this is 2026 – our health system should not be grinding to a halt because of preventable IT failures,” Fitzsimons said.
“Patients deserve the very best care, and clinicians can’t do that when hamstrung by dated systems that are now regularly falling over. It’s high time Health Minister Simeon Brown stopped making excuses and started properly funding the digital infrastructure our hospitals desperately need.”
‘Patient care continued safely’
Health NZ executive director northern region Andrew Brant confirmed the outage in a statement to 1News.
“Health New Zealand hospitals in Te Tai Tokerau, Waitematā, Auckland and Counties Manukau experienced an IT outage yesterday impacting some clinical and operational systems,” he said.
“The outage lasted around 12 hours with services restored to all impacted hospitals in the early hours of this morning.”
Brant said the affected hospitals and emergency departments “remained open and patient care continued safely during the incident”.
An incident debrief was underway to identify “any potential opportunities” to improve its systems.
“We appreciate the professionalism and adaptability of our staff across the region in managing the disruption.”