The denial of information by Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora (HNZ) comes after staff at Wakari Hospital reported exhaustion and being in dangerous situations with patients.
The Otago Daily Times requested from HNZ under the Official Information Act (OIA) how many assaults on staff have been reported at Wakari Hospital in the past two years.
This information has been provided to the ODT in past years.
Yesterday, HNZ head of government services Sasha Wood said it was too difficult to collate the data because of new reporting systems aimed at giving it "a fuller picture of the safety and wellbeing for patients, staff and visitors".
The changes meant the assaults were not recorded as a separate reporting category.
HNZ did not respond by deadline to a question about how not being able to easily access assault data gave the organisation a "fuller picture" of the situation.
Public Service Association national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons criticised HNZ’s refusal.
"HNZ’s decision not to release this data under the OIA goes against their responsibilities as a public agency to be transparent. This data exists and should be released — what have they got to hide?
"The reality is that you can’t prevent what you don’t measure."
Taieri MP Ingrid Leary was also critical.
"It’s concerning that Health New Zealand cannot provide clear data on assaults against staff at Wakari Hospital for the past two years.
"Health workers deserve to know that incidents in their workplace are being properly recorded and taken seriously."
Ms Wood said Wakari could be a "challenging" environment where patients might exhibit unpredictable behaviour for a range of clinical reasons, including delirium, acute pain, the side effects of medication, or underlying medical or mental health conditions.
"While we cannot eliminate all these issues, HNZ has robust processes and escalation pathways in place to manage these situations, minimise the risk of harm and prevent further escalation."
These comments did not impress Ms Fitzimons.
"Right now, health workers around the country are abused and assaulted on a daily basis, receiving in some cases lifelong, life-changing injuries.
"This is not good enough, and the starting point needs to be prevention."
Ms Fitzimons said she would like to see comprehensive data collection of assaults on health workers released because "we need to see a commitment from HNZ and the government that abuse and assaults of health workers is not acceptable".
"It is not a ‘normal’ part of the job for workers in inpatient mental health wards to be abused and assaulted, it is not acceptable and is preventable.
"The government and HNZ must ensure health workers are safe at work. Everyone, including health workers, deserves to go to work without worrying whether they’ll be assaulted today."
HNZ also declined to release information about staff taking leave as "the reason for a staff member taking leave is generally not recorded in our system".
Ms Wood said HNZ was looking to become more transparent in its dissemination of information, and was developing a new system for reporting.
"This new system will, over time, result in significantly improved cross-system data visibility and standardisation.
"However, in the short-term the reality is that we have less ability to compare data across years because we are moving to a whole new set of reporting categories."
Ms Leary, who is also the Labour Party spokeswoman for mental health, said this was not good enough.
"Introducing a new reporting system should strengthen transparency, not create gaps in the data.
"If the system cannot clearly distinguish between different types of assaults, it raises real questions about whether it will improve safety monitoring in the first place."
If HNZ were to fulfil the ODT’s request, Ms Wood said it would need to divert personnel "from their other core duties and ... impair our ability to carry out our other core functions".
