Fragile Hospital IT Systems Again Exposed By Major Outage – Action Needed Now

Patient care has again been compromised by the second major IT outage to impact hospitals across Auckland and Northland in less than a month.

The PSA is aware a critical outage this afternoon impacted the systems which store and manage all medical images from x rays, CT and MRI scans. The system crashed for an hour impacting hospitals in our most populous region. The Northland region is continuing to experience issues.

“This is the second critical failure in less than a month, again exposing how fragile the hospital IT systems are. Patient safety is again being put at risk because of government underfunding,” said Fleur Fitzsimons, National Secretary for the Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi.

“The PACs system impacted by the outage is a critical function of our hospitals which clinicians rely on to access images so they can assess and treat patients needing urgent treatment in EDs, in operating theatres and elsewhere.

“The outage means clinicians and radiographers must communicate by text and phone to pass on vital information from scans. Without a doubt this will slow down treatment, compromising care.

“It was only late last month that a 12 hour outage forced clinicians across hospitals in Auckland and Northland to use paper-based systems and whiteboards.

“The Government shouldn’t need another wake-up call. It needs to immediately review 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.

“Does someone have to die before urgent action is taken? New Zealanders deserve better, we can’t afford to wait.

“This comes after we warned the Government of the consequences of severely downsizing Health NZ’s digital services team, but it still ploughed on with significant cuts.

“This is 2026 – our health system should not be grinding to a halt because of preventable IT failures.”

About PSA:

The Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi is Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest trade union, representing and supporting more than 95,000 workers across central government, state-owned enterprises, local councils, health boards and community groups.

© Scoop Media