4 February 2026
Spencer Jones
[FYI request #32941 email] Tēnā koe Spencer
Your request for official information, reference: HNZ00105191
Thank you for your email on 2 December 2025, transferred from the Ministry of Health to Health
New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora (Health NZ) on the 8 December 2025, for the following under the
Official Information Act 1982 (the OIA):
“I am now submitting a reduced and targeted OIA that focuses only on national-level data
that Te Whatu Ora already collects for operational, planning, and reporting purposes.
Please treat this as a replacement for my earlier request.
1. Workforce – National Mental Health & Crisis Services (2020–2025)
For each financial year 2020/21 to 2024/25 (or the most recent year available), please
provide:
(a) National FTE counts for:
• Acute mental health crisis teams (CATT/CAHT)
• Community mental health clinicians
• Psychiatric registrars and consultants
• Mental health nurses
• Peer support workers (if recorded)
(b) Vacancy rates (%) for the same groups.
(c) A statement confirming whether Te Whatu Ora holds:
• historical workforce data prior to 2020,
• crisis workforce data at regional DHB level pre-unification.
2. Crisis Service Demand & Response Performance (2020–2025)
For each financial year:
(a) Total number of crisis contacts recorded national y — including phone triage, mobile
crisis response, ED mental-health presentations.
(b) National average response time for mobile crisis teams, as measured internal y (for
example: median time from referral to on-scene assessment or telehealth assessment).
(c) The national KPI or benchmark used for crisis response times, if any.
(d) If Te Whatu Ora does not collect any of the above data centrally, please confirm this
explicitly.
3. Inpatient Mental Health Capacity & Pressure Indicators (2020–2025)
Please provide the following annual national indicators:
(a) Total number of adult acute mental health inpatient beds
(b) Annual average occupancy rate (%)
(c) Number of reported “bed blocking / no bed available” incidents, where such
incidents are recorded national y.
If no national dataset exists, please confirm.
4. National Suicidology Indicators (2020–2025)
This request does not seek coronial detail, only established national indicators.
(a) The annually published national suicide death numbers, or a link to where Te Whatu
Ora routinely publishes them.
(b) National figures for re-presentation or repeat crisis contact within 7 days and within
28 days after an attempted suicide or serious self-harm incident, if Te Whatu Ora
collects this as part of its standard service monitoring.
If no national monitoring occurs for 7-day / 28-day follow-up, please confirm.
5. Police-Assisted Mental Health Cal outs (2020–2025) Please provide:
(a) Any national-level data Te Whatu Ora holds recording police attendance for mental-
health crisis events, including Section 109/110 Mental Health Act events.
(b) If Te Whatu Ora does not hold this data (i.e., it is held only by NZ Police), please
confirm.
Response
For clarity, I wil respond to each request in turn.
1. Workforce – National Mental Health & Crisis Services (2020–2025)
For each financial year 2020/21 to 2024/25 (or the most recent year available), please
provide:
(a) National FTE counts for:
• Acute mental health crisis teams (CATT/CAHT)
• Community mental health clinicians
• Psychiatric registrars and consultants
• Mental health nurses
• Peer support workers (if recorded)
(b) Vacancy rates (%) for the same groups.
Health NZ records Full-time Equivalent (FTE) employees in their primary areas of work.
Please refer to
Appendix One, which provides a breakdown of FTE from 2020 to 2025 for
psychiatric registrars, consultants and mental health nurses with the primary areas of work being in
Mental Health.
Crisis Teams, community mental health clinicians and peer support workers are often made up of
employees from different professions with different expertise to manage crisis situations. Your
request for this information is refused under section 18(e) of the OIA as this information does not
exist.
(c) A statement confirming whether Te Whatu Ora holds:
• historical workforce data prior to 2020,
• crisis workforce data at regional DHB level pre-unification.
Health NZ was established in 2022, before this health services were run by District Health Boards.
Your request for this information very broad, and substantial manual research and collation would
be required to bring together all documents within scope of your request. As such, I refuse your
request under section 18(f) of the OIA. However, Health Workforce Information Programme
(HWIP) retains historical workforce data from former DHBs, which was used to answer part one of
the request. Information about HWIP can be found on the Health NZ websit
e: Health workforce
information programme – Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora. I have considered whether fixing a charge for the supply of the information or extending
the timeframe for response would enable Health NZ to respond. I do not consider that
either option would remove the impact that supplying the information would have on our other
operations.
2. Crisis Service Demand & Response Performance (2020–2025)
For each financial year:
(a) Total number of crisis contacts recorded nationally — including phone triage, mobile
crisis response, ED mental-health presentations.
The total number of crisis contacts recorded nationally can be found on the Health NZ website:
Mental Health and Addiction: Service Use web tool. Please note that all Health NZ districts have Crisis Assessment and Treatment Teams that operate
as mobile teams in the community to provide crisis support, including after-hours, and are
complemented by other services as part of the crisis service continuum e.g. crisis triage services
and inpatient units.
(b) National average response time for mobile crisis teams, as measured internal y (for
example: median time from referral to on-scene assessment or telehealth
assessment).
This information is not held centrally. Providing the information you have requested would require
substantial collation and manual review across multiple systems and locations. As such your
request is refused under section 18(f) of the OIA.
I have considered whether fixing a charge for the supply of the information or extending
the timeframe for response would enable Health NZ to respond. I do not consider that
either option would remove the impact that supplying the information would have on our other
operations.
(c) The national KPI or benchmark used for crisis response times, if any.
Information about the Health NZ’s KPI Programme for Mental Health and Addiction is publicly
available and can be found here:
www.mhakpi.health.nz/indicators/. The KPI Programme’s indicators are measures designed to summarise and provide data-based
insights into how New Zealand’s mental health and addiction services are meeting the needs of
tāngata whai ora and whānau.
Based on sector priorities, the indicators enable Health NZ and Non-Government Organisations’
(NGOs) services across the county to examine their mental health data in a comparable way so
they can learn from each other and implement continuous improvement initiatives that can be
monitored over time.
(d) If Te Whatu Ora does not collect any of the above data centrally, please confirm this
explicitly.
PRIMHD (pronounced ‘primed’) is Health NZs single national mental health and addiction tool
collecting information of service activity and outcomes data for health consumers. The data is
collected from the regions and NGOs.
You can read more about PRIMHD and other Health NZ national data collections here:
www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/for-health-professionals/data-and-statistics/nz-health-statistics/national-
collections-and-surveys/collections/primhd-mental-health-data.
3. Inpatient Mental Health Capacity & Pressure Indicators (2020–2025)
Please provide the following annual national indicators:
(a) Total number of adult acute mental health inpatient beds
As at September 2025, there were 612 adult acute mental health inpatient beds throughout the
country.
(b) Annual average occupancy rate (%)
(c) Number of reported “bed blocking / no bed available” incidents, where such
incidents are recorded national y. If no national dataset exists, please confirm.
This information is not recorded in a national dataset therefore this part of your request is refused
under section 18(e) of the OIA as this information does not exist or, despite reasonable efforts to
locate it, cannot be found.
4. National Suicidology Indicators (2020–2025)
This request does not seek coronial detail, only established national indicators.
(a) The annually published national suicide death numbers, or a link to where Te Whatu
Ora routinely publishes them.
Information regarding the Health NZ web tool for suicide statistics is available here:
www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/for-health-professionals/data-and-statistics/suicide/data-web-tool. A direct link to the web tool is available
: https://tewhatuora.shinyapps.io/suicide-web-tool/.
(b) National figures for re-presentation or repeat crisis contact within 7 days and within
28 days after an attempted suicide or serious self-harm incident, if Te Whatu Ora
collects this as part of its standard service monitoring.
If no national monitoring occurs for 7-day / 28-day follow-up, please confirm.
Health NZ does not collect this data nationally therefore this part of your request is refused under
section 18(e) of the OIA as this information does not exist.
5. Police-Assisted Mental Health Cal outs (2020–2025) Please provide:
(a) Any national-level data Te Whatu Ora holds recording police attendance for mental-
health crisis events, including Section 109/110 Mental Health Act events.
(b) If Te Whatu Ora does not hold this data (i.e., it is held only by NZ Police), please
confirm.
Health NZ does not hold national-level data on police attendance for mental health crisis events,
including those under Sections 109 and 110 of the Mental Health Act. Where police attendance is
recorded, this information is captured across a range of digital and non-digital platforms at service,
facility, campus, or district level. Police attendance is not a primary data element in our systems,
and where recorded, it is inconsistent and not easily extractable.
Providing the information you have requested would require substantial col ation and manual
review across multiple systems and locations. As such your request is refused under section 18(f)
of the OIA.
I have considered whether fixing a charge for the supply of the information or extending
the timeframe for response would enable Health NZ to respond. I do not consider that
either option would remove the impact that supplying the information would have on our other
operations.
For completeness, we note that a very small subset of activity involving police may be captured in
the PRIMHD dataset.
You may wish to contact New Zealand Police directly, as they are the most likely source of data on
police attendance at mental health crisis events.
How to get in touch
If you have any questions, you can contact us at
[email address].
If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the
Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
by phoning 0800 802 602.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, Health NZ may proactively
release a copy of this response on our website. Al requester data, including your name and
contact details, wil be removed prior to release.
Nāku iti noa, nā
Danielle Coe
Manager, Government Services
Health New Zealand I Te Whatu Ora
