Tony Ryall

Wellington, Oct 3 NZPA - The Ministry of Health is expected to lose nearly 400 staff positions over 2-1/2 years, Health Minister Tony Ryall says.

The public health sector was still going through a process to cut administrative positions and move resources into frontline services.

"We are delivering record levels of elective surgery, speeding up emergency departments, getting cancer patients treated faster, getting more kids immunised," he said on TV One's Q&A programme.

"We are getting better value for money in health."

Mr Ryall said there would be further savings throughout the health sector in terms of administrative staff.

"Over the period of 2-1/2 years we're expecting the number of positions in the Ministry of Health to go down from about 1675 to 1290," he said.

Mr Ryall acknowledged there was a clinical workforce crisis and said New Zealand needed to retain more hospital specialists.

"At the same time as being one of the world's biggest exporters of doctors, we're also one of the biggest importers," he said.

"We value those people making a contribution to the New Zealand health service but we want to keep more of our doctors here."

Mr Ryall was questioned about data which showed New Zealand was ranked bottom out of 28 countries for the number of specialists per 1000 people -- 0.8 percent compared with a developed country average of 1.8 percent.

"That ignores the way that our health service works," he said.

"We've got a very strong focus on primary care in New Zealand. Some health services have a much stronger focus on their secondary hospitals."