12. Question No. 12—HealthSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore) to the Minister of HealthQuestion No. 12—Health12. SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore) to the Minister of Health: What is the total number of staff vacancies across all district health boards and what specific plans if any does he have to address staffing vacancies in the New Zealand health system?Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): The health sector workforce is one of New Zealand's biggest. For example in 2019 there were approximately 76000 full-time equivalent employees employed by the 20 DHBs. I'm advised that as at the year ended 31 March 2021 there are approximately 3668 full-time equivalent vacancies across all DHBs. I note that this includes corporate vacancies and represents less than 5 percent of the total number of full-time equivalents in 2019. In response to the second part of the member's question in the short term all DHBs have active recruitment plans for clinical vacancies. Implementing Care Capacity Demand Management is also a priority for the Government and we have funded an additional more than 3000 nurse roles since 2017. In the long term we are reforming the health system as a single Health NZ organisation which will allow for national planning for our workforce and allow us to start investing in and building the workforce we need for the future.Simon Watts: What urgent action will he take to address critical shortage of nurses across district health boards which number over 1600 and over 450 at Waikato District Health Board alone?Hon ANDREW LITTLE: By contrast to the previous National Government this Government committed to increasing the nursing workforce through the Care Capacity Demand Management scheme and we have funded an additional more than 3000 full-time equivalent roles as part of that programme. The reality is that the DHBs have been struggling to fill many of those roles on a full-time permanent basis. They have been reliant on agency nurses to fill those gaps. But that is why we also made a further investment in terms of training and workforce development but that has been somewhat haphazard across 20 DHBs. That is why one of the benefits of Health NZ is that we can get a coherent consistent programme of workforce development to start filling those roles on a permanent basis.Simon Watts: Will the almost half a billion dollars in taxpayer money he is spending to restructure the health sector deliver any additional front-line doctors or nurses; if so how many?Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Part of the $486 million appropriated for the transition to the new health system includes new commissioning funding for both the interim Māori Health Authority and interim Health NZ. That will mean new services—that is to say services that do not exist now but will exist in the future. How those organisations who are contracted or commissioned to provide those services staff those services will be for them but they will be additional services. And they will add to the capacity of our health system.Simon Watts: How can he be confident the Government can deliver COVID-19 vaccinations to every New Zealander by the end of the year as planned when the health workforce are struggling to operate with business as usual?SPEAKER: Is" struggling but carry on.Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Without wanting to tread on the toes of my very good colleague the Minister for COVID-19 Response the Hon Chris Hipkins what I can say is that because of the very fine planning done by those responsible for it we are ahead of our planned target achievement for the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out and we remain confident that we will fulfil our vaccination target as required by the end of the year."