NSW Health is inviting permanent staff who do not provide frontline care to express interest in a voluntary redundancy, under what it calls the Optional Realignment Program. The offer runs across every local health district, the Ministry of Health and the statewide health agencies, the Newcastle Herald reported on 15 October, the day the program was announced.
A reader at NSW Health told The Aussie Corporate that the email went "to all staff", with "Frontline staff exempt", and that it reads as an invitation to apply with "no commitment to have to take it".
The Herald quoted a NSW Health document that says the program is open to "permanent NSW Health staff who do not provide frontline care as part of their role". Frontline staff are those "who provide direct patient care, deliver health services, or work in roles that directly support the delivery of patient care and clinical services". Nurses, doctors, allied health staff, ward clerks, patient services staff and health care assistants are outside the program, the Herald reported.
A NSW Health spokesperson told the Herald the program "will invite EOIs from eligible employees in a range of corporate, management and administrative roles". NSW Health would not say how many redundancies will be offered.
Staff who receive an offer have up to 14 calendar days to accept it, the document says, and anyone who accepts will finish "no later than January 15, 2027". Expressions of interest close on 12 November, Health Services Daily reported on 16 October.
The program also covers NSW Ambulance, NSW Health Pathology, Health Protection NSW, HealthShare NSW, eHealth NSW, Health Infrastructure, the Single Digital Patient Record Implementation Authority, the Agency for Clinical Innovation, the Clinical Excellence Commission, the Health Education and Training Institute, the Bureau of Health Information and Cancer Institute NSW, the Herald reported.
What staff and unions have been told
Hunter New England Health chief executive Tracey McCosker told staff in an email that "we encourage staff members to carefully consider their personal and professional circumstances" before making an expression of interest or accepting an offer, the Herald reported. "Employees who accept an offer will have access to career transition and outplacement support," she wrote.
Health Services Union NSW secretary Gerard Hayes told members in an email that "NSW Health has made two important commitments in this program of voluntary redundancies". "No employee will be forced out of their job and no position will be made redundant if it will negatively impact frontline services," he wrote. "Every job is a job to someone," he told the Herald.
The NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association told its members the program "must not impact the work of frontline nurses and midwives", the Herald reported.
As of 28 October neither union's website nor NSW Health's media releases page carries anything on the program.
What is not known
NSW Health has not said how many roles it expects to go, how many staff are eligible, or what the program is expected to save. The stated reason is to put more staff into frontline care to meet growing demand, Health Services Daily reported on 19 October. The NSW Government said in a release on 14 June that its 2026-27 budget would fund 9,000 more health workers over four years.
Earlier in October the Herald reported that NSW Health had placed NSW Ambulance on "performance level three" over concerns about its ability to operate within its 2026-27 budget.
An earlier reader, at HealthShare NSW, told The Aussie Corporate on 20 October that HealthShare employees other than frontline staff "have been invited to apply for voluntary redundancies". HealthShare NSW is on the Herald's list of agencies in the program. That reader also described the payout on offer, which The Aussie Corporate has not seen in a document.
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