Better Health Outcomes

New Zealand’s health system is in crisis, with soaring wait lists and emergency department wait times, plunging childhood immunisation rates, and New Zealanders facing longer delays accessing urgent cancer treatment or surgery. Our exhausted health workforce are doing the very best that they can.

For six years, this Government has failed Kiwis on health. Labour has obsessively focussed on a costly and bureaucratic restructure of the health sector in the middle of a pandemic while allowing every measure of health outcomes to go backwards.

National will focus relentlessly on results. We will increase health funding every year, and shift resources from back-office bureaucrats to the frontline. We will restore explicit health targets to ensure the health sector is focussed on delivering better outcomes for key health priorities.

We will increase funding for cancer medicines, so New Zealanders have access to more of the treatments available in Australia. And we will address the health workforce crisis by training, retaining and attracting more doctors, nurses and midwives.

Policy highlights
  • Restore health targets to deliver better, faster and more reliable healthcare.
  • Fund 13 new cancer treatments and speed up the approval process for new medicines.
  • Improve cancer management for breast, ovarian, bowel, and prostate cancer.
  • Extend free postnatal stays for mothers of newborn babies to three days.
  • Provide free continuous glucose monitors to type 1 diabetics aged under 18.
  • Deliver more nurses, midwives and doctors to reduce wait times and improve health outcomes.
  • Increase access to mental health services and grow the mental health workforce.

Read National’s full plan for Better Health Outcomes

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