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 emergency department (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.
“The outage prevented clinicians accessing key patient information and communicating internally and across the region, slowing down decision-making on patient care.”
Health New Zealand Northern Region executive director Andrew Brant confirmed Health NZ hospitals in Te Tai Tokerau, Waitematā, Auckland, and Counties Manukau experienced an IT outage yesterday.
He said this impacted some clinical and operational systems.
“The outage lasted around 12 hours, with services restored to all impacted hospitals in the early hours of this morning,” Brant said.
He said hospitals and emergency departments remained open and patient care continued safely during the incident.
“We are currently completing an incident debrief to identify any potential opportunities to improve our systems.
“We appreciate the professionalism and adaptability of our staff across the region in managing the disruption.”
Patient Elinor Kennedy was at the Auckland Hospital ED last night when the systems crashed, which forced her and others to wait hours to be triaged.
“It was way more chaotic than even an ED should be. One triage nurse was having to transcribe all notes by hand,” Kennedy said.
“The ED was filling up around her, well past the point of overflowing.”
Kennedy said lab results couldn’t be emailed to ED, so communication with labs was entirely reliant on phone communication.
“There were not enough administration staff on-site, which meant 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.”
Nico, who was also a patient at the same busy ED, said he was left waiting about 1.5 times longer because of the outage.
“I have nothing but praise for the ED staff. Despite the massive increase in workload, they kept their cool, remained professional and kept me updated about my care and the impact the IT outage would have on me,” Nico said.
A doctor in the emergency room of Middlemore Hospital also confirmed they were experiencing the outage.
The PSA said this major outage has exposed the Government’s cuts to digital health services.
The PSA said it was “time for Government to admit fault and properly fund the upgrade of old IT systems”.
National Secretary for the PSA Fleur Fitzsimons said the Government should take blame for this incident.
“These failures are a direct result of its short-sighted decision to underfund and cut roles at Health NZ’s digital services team,” Fitzsimons said.
“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 on to whiteboards and paper forms while trying to deliver modern healthcare.”
This incident follows outages at South Island hospitals earlier this month and the recent failure of the patient portal at Wellington Hospital.
The PSA is calling on the Privacy Commissioner to widen his investigation into the ManageMyHealth cyber attack to include a comprehensive review of the vulnerability of public health IT systems, which hold 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.
Health New Zealand’s acting chief information technology officer - digital services, Darren Douglass, said there was no link between IT outages in recent weeks and staffing numbers in the Digital Services team at Health New Zealand.
He said the outages were due to equipment failure, not resources.
“All but one of the outages this month have been due to third-party vendor issues,” he said.
While they continue to improve and modernise the technology environment, he said patient safety remains the priority.
“Our hospitals have contingency plans in place to ensure the delivery of safe patient care during an IT outage,” he said.
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