Te Whatu Ora chief clinical officer Pete Watson admits the health system is still struggling to work through a backlog of patients which has been building since COVID-19 started running rampant in the community.
It comes after National's health spokesperson Shane Reti claimed emergency department wait times had hit a new record, with nearly a third of people heading to EDs waiting more than six hours for treatment. The first quarterly report from Te Whatu Ora/Health New Zealand shows the trend for getting seen within that window had declined from 76 percent to 71 percent.
Paediatric and emergency junior doctor Nina Su said many of her colleagues wanted to leave the health sector.
Dr Su said that included doctors, nurses and everyone in between.
"The overall staff morale is low," she told AM on Monday.
"For example, sometimes - not all the time but sometimes when I enter a night shift in the emergency department - we look at the electronic whiteboard… and see this massive list of people who haven't been seen."
Staffing shortages plagued the health system for much of last year and Te Whatu Ora had already warned the winter of 2023 will be another tough one for the health sector.
Dr Watson told AM that Te Whatu Ora is desperately trying to increase its workforce to keep up with demand.
He admitted, however, ED wait times had deteriorated since July - during the second wave of the Omicron COVID-19 outbreak.
"They haven't bounced back so it's been a really tough, tough time," Dr Watson said.
"There's a huge amount of work to be done but, certainly, it hasn't been a time where we've been able to see the improvements we hoped for.
"We are going to be making changes so we can really be looking to be able to do better."
In a statement to AM, Health Minister Ayesha Verrall's office said one of the changes she'd suggested was better management of the flow of patients in and out of hospitals.
Dr Watson said it was Te Whatu Ora's responsibility to ensure that happens.
"We take responsibility for that and we need to do better, but part of that is about getting more workforce and, as we know, everywhere is really challenged getting enough people - this is a global problem," he said. "We are training more people but there's a time from starting training to completion.
"We're looking to have more people come to New Zealand; doctors, nurses, technicians, others so again, across the system, we are trying to get more people in and to support those people when they're here in the workplace so we can provide a better experience for them.
"There's a lot of work to be done and we're certainly not at the place we want to be, so we will be focused on that but this winter is going to be, I think, is going to be particularly challenging."
