The comments come in the wake of concerns by nurses of burnout and Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora (HNZ) taking too long to respond to requests for vacant positions to be filled.
New Zealand Nurses Organisation president Anne Daniels said HNZ did not seem to compile national recruitment statistics.
"Anecdotally, our members are telling us that they are seeing gaps in roster and positions not filled. There are constant calls for extra shifts and overtime. However, that’s anecdotal.
"Unfortunately, HNZ is choosing not to collect the information and data it needs to actually answer questions about how long it takes to recruit or replace a vacant nurse position."
This led to staffing issues.
"We don’t know whether or not a vacancy is being recruited to in terms of the restricted budget or to the actual need of the patient workloads and demand to keep patients safe and provide them with timely care.
"How are HNZ going to make informed decisions going forward about anything if they do not collect data and information and have it analysed to inform those decisions? Is there a deliberate choice of making decisions without evidence?"
She said as a result, HNZ could be seen to be "cutting by stealth" due to the perceived length of recruitment times.
The Otago Daily Times asked HNZ whether it was able to release the timeframe for recruitments, and what sort of monitoring it placed on recruitment times.
An HNZ spokeswoman said it did not "hold this information at a national level".
HNZ chief national nurse Nadine Gray said national progress in nursing recruitment over the past year had exceeded expectations, "with more nurses now employed by our hospitals than ever before".
"This success has significantly changed the nursing workforce landscape and resulted in far fewer vacancies. In the latest intake, 857 new nursing graduates have been employed by HNZ as at last week."
Ms Gray said at any given time, there were about 7400 degree-level nursing students in training, alongside a smaller cohort of enrolled nursing students.
"It is important to remember that HNZ is not the only employer of nurses. Across the health sector there will also be nursing opportunities in primary healthcare, community, public health, private hospitals or aged residential care."
HNZ did not respond to the NZNO’s concerns that it was "cutting by stealth".
"We are committed to growing our domestic nursing workforce to help give us a sustainable and stable workforce complemented by a highly skilled and capable overseas trained workforce; and we are continuing to actively recruit nurses in specialist areas such as mental health and addictions, and critical care.
"The ACE recruitment process for new graduate nurses is undergoing a review to help improve data management and introduce enhanced candidate care to support graduates with gaining employment."
