New report reveals the grim reality of heart healthcare in New Zealand

A damning new report has exposed deep flaws in New Zealand’s heart healthcare system, where access to life-saving treatment often depends on luck, postcode, and ethnicity rather than clinical need.

Commissioned by The Heart of Aotearoa - Kia Manawanui Trust (now the Cardiac and Respiratory Foundation NZ) and prepared by the University of Otago, the 'Heart disease in Aotearoa: morbidity, mortality, and service delivery' report reveals a system plagued by chronic under-resourcing, critical workforce shortages, and deadly inequities.

Trust Chief Executive Ms Letitia Harding says the report lays bare a system that is failing at every level.

"Heart care in New Zealand isn’t just stretched - it’s on the verge of collapse.

"We are failing in all aspects, and it's costing New Zealanders their lives."

Key findings from the report include:

• Life-threatening delays: Half of all heart attack patients aren't seen within internationally accepted timeframes.
• Alarming workforce shortage: New Zealand has only a third of the cardiologists it should have.
• Systemic inequality: Māori and Pacific people are hospitalised or die from heart disease more than a decade earlier, on average, than other New Zealanders.
• The financial burden: Heart disease costs the country's health system and economy $13.8 billion per year
• A postcode lottery for care: Regions with the highest death rates -Tairāwhiti, Lakes, Whanganui, and Taranaki - have the fewest cardiac specialists.
• The deadliest conditions: Heart disease accounts for 20% of all deaths in New Zealand. The five heart conditions responsible for the majority are: heart failure, atrial fibrillation and flutter (AFF), acute myocardial infarction (AMI), subsequent myocardial infarction and cardiomyopathy.

Trust Medical Director and cardiologist Dr Sarah Fairley says the findings match what frontline clinicians see every day.

"From inside the system, I can tell you that this report reflects what we see every day: a workforce stretched beyond safe limits, patients slipping through the cracks, and no end in sight."

Ms Harding says this report should be a wake-up call for the Government.

The Foundation is calling for an urgent government response, including immediate investment in public hospital cardiac care infrastructure - beds and equipment - and a national strategy to recruit and retain cardiology staff.