Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said a board needed to be reinstated. Photo: VNP/Louis Collins
Health Commissioner Lester Levy is known as "the man who saved Milo", after stepping in personally to stop management cutting hot drink supplies for frontline staff.
However, there has been huge backlash to the budget cuts and job losses since he replaced Health NZ's Board last July.
Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said she wrote to the minister a week ago asking him to reinstate a board.
"In my view, Lester Levy has been destructive and also secretive, so it's important to get back to the normality of having a board."
Under the current government, health had been in a state of "perpetual chaos", she said, citing the string of high-level resignations, including Health NZ chief executive Margie Apa and the Director General of Health Diana Sarfati.
Health Minister says Commissioner's plan for the health system continues
Health Minister Simeon Brown said Levy had done "a good job".
Simeon Brown. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro
"The Commission was never intended to be in place for a long period time.
"It was there to make sure we stabilised Health NZ and got back to basics.
"That's what the delivery plan that's been released by the commissioners today was all about.
"And now it's about putting the focus back on the patients."
At an invitation-only speech to a Business NZ summit in Auckland Friday morning, the minister slammed Health NZ for poor leadership and lax controls, citing an independent report by Deloitte.
He said the health reforms were bungled by the previous government.
Health Commissioner Lester Levy. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro
"We're focused on the patient, they were focused on bureaucracy. We're focused on delivery, they were focused on reorganising the organisation.
"So we're here saying very clearly what our priorities are: elective surgery, primary care, immunisation - making sure we've focused Health NZ on delivery."
The minister said he wanted to see regions to take back control of their own decision-making and closer, longer-term contracts with private providers.
As "a first step", Health NZ would invest $50 million between now and the end of June to do 10,500 elective operations.
Senior doctors sceptical
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said however the government needed to ensure there were enough staff to do it.
"This trend to privatisation, or outsourcing to private, means we're effectively paying twice," she said.
"Once with the public funds, subsidising provision of care through private which actually costs more, and also in providing the medical staff that we actually need to stay in public, who go across [to private] to do the work."
Dalton said frontline health staff would be delighted if the health minister made good on his commitment to break Health NZ's stranglehold on decision-making, and put an the "glacially slow" appointment processes.
"We have absolutely been losing doctors, senior doctors, who are willing and able to work here, through incompetent recruitment processes, which are no longer managed locally."
Yet Dalton said she was "bewildered" by the minister's demand for increased productivity, when the government was not willing to invest in recruiting and retaining specialists.
Contrary to the minister's claims of "record investment" in health, the union's analysis of the Budget showed government health spend had fallen in real terms, she said.
Nurses hit back at minister's 'productivity' jibe
According to Deloitte's financial report published by Health NZ, there were some factors in its budget blowout that were outside the agency's control - including the 30 percent rise of nurses' wages over three years.
A review in mid-2024 found some regions approved extra nurse hires "under the mistaken belief that there were centrally held funds available to cover the increase in staff costs".
Nurses Organisation chief executive Paul Goulter hit back at the minister's claim that pay rises for nurses had not delivered the "productivity gains" for patients he would have expected.
"We're really disappointed. We're absolutely focused on trying to get a health system that works for all New Zealanders and not playing petty politics."
Nurses were working harder than ever, and the salary increases of previous years were intended to make up for decades of decline and sex-based discrimination, he said.
The main drivers for ballooning health costs were the ageing population and burden of chronic disease.
"That means that a lot of money goes into the system just to have it stay still, and I don't think any New Zealanders want it to stay still, because the health system is not in good shape."
Patient advocate Malcolm Mulholland - from Patient Voice Aotearoa - said he hoped the new board would be interested in more than money.
"The Lester Levy experiment will be remembered for creating havoc because he had a single focus and that was on cutting costs, and as a result, patients suffered."
