Last year more than 1200 aged care beds closed with the sector hamstrung by workforce shortages and it now estimates it's short 1000 nurses.
Newshub can reveal 80 percent of New Zealanders aren't confident their loved ones will get the care they need.
Aged care nurse manager Natalie Seymour isn't just tired.
"I would say I've probably been three shades of burnt out," she said.
Seymour said she's also tired of the Government not listening.
Her centre is down three full-time nurses and that burden falls on everyone.
"We have families who are not getting the level of service or care they deserve because we just don't have the staff to do it," said Seymour.
It's not just the sector that's worried.
A poll commissioned by Aged Care Matters provided exclusively to Newshub found only 22 percent of New Zealanders are confident their loved ones will receive the care they deserve in the future, and 65 percent are concerned about aged care sector funding and workforce shortages.
Aged Care Matters spokesperson Dr Chris Gallivan said this isn't a problem that's going away.
"We have a crisis in New Zealand about aged care," he said.
Asked if it was a crisis, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said it's an "area where it's challenging".
The Government last year made a $200 million pay equity offer to aged care nurses.
"It's about half the amount that they promised last year and quite frankly it's a drop in the bucket," said Dr Gallivan.
Hipkins said: "We have to make sure the money we're putting in to increase salaries actually goes into increasing salaries."
Aged care is far from the only corner of our health system desperate for staff.
But Newshub can reveal the Health Minister doesn't know the size of the problem.
Late last year, her predecessor Andrew Little was asked for a breakdown of the vacancies in emergency departments. He provided it.
But when Dr Ayesha Verrall was asked she said the data wasn't held centrally.
In a statement, the minister said she recognised the information was of interest to the public and that she'd asked Te Whatu Ora to develop a mechanism for it to be centralised.
"Wasn't that supposed to be one of the things Health New Zealand was created for? To centralise information and centralise data so we could report centrally? Clearly a failure of the health reforms," National health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti said.
Hipkins said he hasn't had a briefing on it.
The Prime Minister is likely someone else wanting to see better data.
