The senior doctors' union is not ruling out further industrial action, as Health NZ scrambles to reschedule the thousands of operations and specialist appointments cancelled as a result of a nationwide strike.
About 5500 members of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) walked off the job for an unprecedented 24 hours yesterday over pay and conditions.
Health NZ estimated about 4300 patients missed out on planned care due to the strike, which ended at 11.59pm.
Chief clinical officer Dr Richard Sullivan said he wanted to "acknowledge and thank" hospital staff and contingency planning teams who worked to ensure continued care for patients during the industrial action.
"Any appointments that were deferred due to the strike action will be rescheduled for the next available opportunity."
The impact of the strike varied by hospital, depending on acute care demand on the day and the number of ASMS members who made the decision to strike.
"We remain very concerned about the additional delay caused to a significant number of patients.
"We are committed to settling this collective agreement with ASMS members and we recognise the concerns raised by union members in regard to workforce shortages."
Health NZ maintained its offer to doctors was "fair and reasonable", and had applied to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) for facilitation, he said.
But the union said further industrial action remained "under active consideration".
Executive director Sarah Dalton said a meeting would be held today between representatives of the union, Health NZ and the ERA to see if there were grounds for facilitated bargaining.
"We've never walked away from bargaining - we've done regular bargaining, we've done it with the mediator.
"If they want to do it with a facilitator from the ERA, that's all fine.
"What we really need is for them to turn up and pay intelligent attention to the conversation. And that has not happened until we issued the strike notice."
Health NZ has largely refused to budge from its initial offer of a 1.5% cap on total pay increases for the two-year term.
Its latest offer included a bigger pay rise for about 500 newly-qualified specialists to ensure they would not be paid less than junior doctors.
However, about 5000 of their senior colleagues were in line to get a pay boost of less than 1% a year, which would not be enough to recruit or retain doctors, she said.
"How do you tackle vacancies? You put more time and effort into good terms and conditions for your permanent workforce and you stop spending $380 million a year on locums and temps to plug the gaps."
