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# Health NZ’s accounting fiasco: $28 billion tracked on a single Excel spreadsheet
- URL: https://goodoil.news/health-nzs-accounting-fiasco-28-billion-tracked-on-a-single-excel-spreadsheet/
- Published: 2025-03-08T20:00:52.000Z
- Updated: 2025-03-08T20:37:53.000Z
- Description: Health NZ was essentially flying blind.
- Author: Centrist
- Tags: News

Summarised by [Centrist](http://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news)

**Health New Zealand, responsible for the country’s healthcare system, was tracking its entire $28 billion budget on a single Excel spreadsheet—an archaic, error-prone tool completely unfit for managing billions of public dollars.** 

**A scathing independent report by Deloitte found a staggering lack of financial oversight, uncontrolled spending, and savings plans so ineffective they might as well not exist.**

According to Deloitte, the spreadsheet—the backbone of Health NZ’s financial tracking—was riddled with human errors, lacked proper tracking, and made it nearly impossible to verify uploaded data. A simple error could throw entire budgets off course. 

The agency was burning through $130 million per month beyond its income, while its $500 million “savings plan” was deemed completely ineffective.

Minister of Health Simeon Brown is now reinstating a governing board to clean up the mess, after the previous board was sacked last year for its abysmal financial management. 

Commissioner [Lester Levy](https://centrist.nz/health-nz-offers-voluntary-redundancy/?ref=goodoil.news) insists the agency is now “on a path to increased stability.” 

[**Read more over at The NZ Herald**](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/significant-concerns-health-nz-was-using-a-single-excel-spreadsheet-to-track-28-billion-of-public-money/WADIE2J26JEDVCLXYL7HKTMNDE/?ref=goodoil.news)

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