Health NZ is to become the country's biggest employer - with a staff of 80,000.
Photo: 123RF
There was a record health bump of $11.1 billion in the Budget to help set up the new authority and the Maori Health Authority, which will replace all 20 district health boards.
Minister of Health Andrew Little has been explaining Budget spending to health leaders in Auckland this morning, outlining just how big the new Health NZ organisation will be.
Health workers have expressed frustration that the multiple staffing shortages, some, like nurses, at crisis level, barely rated a mention in the document.
But Little said Health NZ would help.
The scale, along with the centralisation, would allow a more strategic, national approach to sorting the problem, he said.
"There is a worldwide shortage of health staff - we stand in a very competitive market," he said.
"We do what we can. We also invest in creating our own so there is more money going into workforce development, more money going into support people to get health qualifications."
The government has committed $79 million over four years to support workforce development.
But the Nurses Organisation said that support funding only helped around the edges.
It wanted to see meaningful dollars spent on recruiting more workers and paying the existing ones fairly, including making sure there was enough to settle pay disputes.