Health New Zealand is losing its Chief Executive, Director-General of Health, and Director of Public Health in a week of surprise resignations.
New Zealand’s Director General of Health, Dr Diana Sarfati, has said she will leave her role on Feb. 21, making her the third senior figure to resign from Health NZ in the space of a week.
The first to depart was Chief Executive Fepulea’i Margie Apa on Feb. 7. She ended her contract four months early “by mutual agreement” with Commissioner Lester Levy and left immediately.
Three days later, the Director of Public Health, Dr Nicholas Jones, announced his last day in the role will be Feb. 28.
The Health NZ board was dismissed in July for alleged financial incompetence and replaced by Levy, who was tasked with finding savings across the sector. His proposal for restructuring the agency, originally due in August, has yet to be delivered.
Additionally, the Auditor General intervened to prevent Levy from shifting $135 million in anticipated redundancy costs onto the balance sheet for the prior financial year. This move would have artificially inflated the deficit before he took over, while reducing the costs incurred under his leadership.
Although Levy kept his job, his Minister, Dr Shane Reti, was removed from the health portfolio and had his Cabinet ranking reduced. Simeon Brown took over the role.
However, on Feb. 12, Brown—less than a month into the role—declined to confirm whether he had confidence in Levy, saying only that he would “work with whoever’s there to make sure they’re focused on delivering.”
The Department of Health has started a worldwide search for a replacement for Apa’s $900,000-a-year role. She has led the organisation since it was founded in 2022.
Her departure follows Levy’s comments that he was seeking a new chief executive to “build and lead a team that has serious implementation capacity.”
Health New Zealand previously said cost-cutting will last three years as it struggles to deal with a forecast deficit of over $1.1 billion.
The organisation’s latest statement of performance, released in December, said the planned restructuring would save around $660 million this financial year.
These savings would be achieved through more voluntary staff redundancies, consolidation of roles, responsibilities, and expertise into a single national function, and the streamlining of functions such as finance, HR, data and digital, and infrastructure and investment.
While the performance statement assured that frontline clinical care would not be affected, some of the proposed cuts target the Public Health Service, which runs immunisations and monitors outbreaks.
Labour’s acting health spokesperson, Peeni Henare, called the series of resignations a “bloodbath.”
“As Simeon Brown struggles to get up to speed on the complex health portfolio, it’s as if [Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon is getting rid of everyone who disagrees with him,” he said.
“Health is complex, and firing the leadership may come back to haunt the Prime Minister.”