The health headlines for this July alone make for grim reading.
A patient dies after collapsing in a hospital waiting room toilet, another slips in the shower while trying to squash cockroaches, with fleas reported nearby.
Critical IT systems fail, forcing staff back to pen and paper, while hospital buildings fall into disrepair with leaking roofs, mould, failing lights, and wet, crackling electrical sockets.
Then there’s the hospital left with no permanent gastro specialists after the last one departed.
While on Thursday morning, a doctor at Christchurch Hospital told RNZ there are emergency plans to pitch a tent outside as corridors fill up with patients in beds.
And of course, this is on top of the problems that have been making headlines for years: long waiting lists, chronic understaffing, and exhausted frontline workers.
So, have our public hospitals reached a tipping point?
“I think it would be fair to say that it is a bit of a tipping point,” RNZ health correspondent Kate Green tells The Detail.
“If not tipping, then a slow descent into crisis for sure. It does seem like no part of the system is getting a break. The GPs are getting inundated, the hospitals are inundated, there’s bed block because the wards are full, so the EDs are full. It really does feel like every part of it is under pressure.”
She’s spent months talking to patients, doctors, nurses and health leaders.
“I think there’s never been a more important time to talk about health and the fact that we’re in a health crisis and what we can do, what amount of money, what amount of staff would go towards fixing this.”
Few stories have captured the crisis more starkly than the death of a Waikato Hospital patient who collapsed in a toilet after waiting around nine hours to be seen.
“Patients described that there was just a rush of staff to get him out of the toilet onto a gurney,” says Green. “One of the people that I spoke to described how a nurse was performing CPR on top of the gurney as he was wheeled away. You don’t expect to see this in a hospital in New Zealand.”
The man’s family is still waiting for answers.
Then came another story that shocked many New Zealanders for very different reasons.
Patient Claudia Elliott contacted Green after slipping in an Auckland Hospital shower while trying to squash cockroaches.
During the investigation, staff also described an ongoing flea problem, with reports of bites affecting workers, patients and even staff’s family members after fleas were carried home.
“There have been hundreds of reports from staff in the past year or so,” Green says.
Ageing infrastructure is another growing concern.
Hospital IT failures have left clinicians unable to access patient records, slowing treatment and forcing staff back to handwritten notes. Green says those outages are just one example of years of underinvestment.
“We’re seeing how the system is failing all on its own as well … there have been major outages recently … [the recent outage in Waikato] left people unable to check patient records. Of course that makes it harder to treat people and definitely slows everything down in a system that’s already under pressure.”
For frontline staff, the emotional toll is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, with one story staying with Green, who says following the death of the Waikato patient, a nurse finishing her shift reportedly handed complaint forms to people sitting in the emergency department waiting room.
“She was saying, ‘Please, please make a complaint. Tell them what’s happened. Tell them that we need resources. Tell them we’re understaffed. Please be our voice.'”
But Green says it’s not just staff shortages driving the crisis. New Zealand has an ageing population, emergency departments are treating increasingly complex chronic illnesses, and GPs are taking on more procedures that once happened in hospital.
Every part of the health system is under strain. So can any of it be fixed?
Green believes it can – but not quickly.
“The consensus is … to fix this is going to take years because of that long period we spent underfunding the health system.”
Health New Zealand has acknowledged many of the challenges, and Budget 2026 included funding for hospital infrastructure, digital security and primary care. But Green says rebuilding public confidence will take sustained investment over many years.
“I think most people would say investing in general practice is the key. We have to get proper resourcing, proper care, accessible care, fast care in the community.”
Because, she says, if people can see their GP sooner, fewer will end up in already overwhelmed emergency departments.
On a personal note, Green admits she worries about what lies ahead for her own parents, who will start relying more on the health system.
“I know that they’re starting to need more interactions with the health system and I’m scared … I’m almost tempted to buy my mother a plane ticket … send her off to Australia.”
For someone who covers the health system every day, this is perhaps the clearest indication yet of just how much confidence has been shaken.
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