25 hour wait drives another ED death – more blood on Simeon Browns hands

Following the death of a person at Waikato ED after. 9 hour wait, another ED death driven by fears of a 25 hour wait…

Family says woman died after leaving hospital over fears she faced 25-hour wait

A grieving family is seeking answers about what their loved one was told about waiting times at Palmerston North Hospital before she walked out and died hours later while going to get help at another hospital.

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Briar Parfitt, 40, died on Saturday afternoon in a car next to her teenage daughter while the pair were heading to Hawke’s Bay Hospital.

Parfitt’s family say she chose to leave Palmerston North Hospital after she was told she faced a 25-hour wait, although Health NZ has said the average wait on Saturday was only two hours, and the emergency department was staffed sufficiently to meet demand.

Speaking at Parfitt’s family home in Feilding on Wednesday – where family and friends were gathering to pay their respects while Parfitt’s body lay in a pink coffin – her father Colin Adkins was struggling to come to terms with what happened.

RNZ

…what happened was another death caused by underfunding our public health system.

Simeon Brown has underfunded public health and has blood on his hands!

National are mutilating our public health system into a privatised American one and you are letting them!

This…

Elective surgery waits: How private hospitals plan to cut backlogs

Health Minister Simeon Brown has told Health NZ (HNZ), the Crown’s behemoth healthcare provider, to outsource the volume of elective surgeries necessary to meet targets and to lock in private sector delivery with long-term contracts; he’s asked for the first five-year contracts by early next year, and contracts of up to 10years thereafter.

NZ Herald

…as Nicola Willis demands another half a million out of health…

Public sector bosses ordered to look again for new cost savings

Newsroom understands the coalition Government is once again calling on public service agencies to sharpen their pencils, as the finance minister hunts for efficiencies ahead of next year’s Budget.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis tells Newsroom details of the Budget process are confidential and that no decisions have been made by Cabinet yet. Other ministers are remaining similarly tight-lipped.

But sources tell Newsroom letters of expectation have been sent to public service chief executives, once again drawing their attention to the spending of taxpayer money and asking them to look at their spending to see where savings could be made.

Newsroom

…as the impacts of cutting Health IT budgets occur…

Auckland and Northland hospitals hit by major IT outage, chaos in EDs

Hospitals across the North Island have been hit by a major IT outage, impacting access to crucial patient information and causing chaos in emergency rooms.

From late yesterday, the outage took down ED, laboratory and inpatient systems in Auckland and Northland.

This forced nurses and doctors to resort to manual back-ups, paper-based systems and whiteboards overnight.

The Public Service Association (PSA) said nurses had to take on admin tasks, creating “chaos” in EDs and other departments.

This incident had “potentially deadly consequences for patients”, the PSA said.

NZ Herald

…and cutbacks make Public health dangerous…

Wellington Hospital Emergency Department went into code red nearly twice a day in 2025

Wellington Hospital’s emergency department went into its most critical code red status on average nearly twice a day between January and October last year.

RNZ

…let’s be clear.

All those NZ First voters dependent on Public Health are slashing their own throats.

All those who are voting National are vandalising their own public health.

All those who aren’t voting are burning their own hospitals.

National are mutilating our public health system into a privatised American one and you are letting them

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