Trauma systems were a concept that was first introduced in the civilian trauma world in the 1970s after the Vietnam War. In NZ this concept was unexplored until the 1990s. It was not until 2012 that the Government formally introduced a trauma system (network) but very like the system reintroduced by Heath NZ in 2023 it lacked the key elements of executive decision-making and budgetary discretion. Acknowledging the overwhelming impact of a successful system on the Accident Compensation Corporations future liability this organisation began funding the National Trauma Network in 2015. With the success of initial activities the ACC funded a significant business case in 2018 that allowed the National Trauma Network to achieve major clinical process and outcome goals. The Network has presented its activities in local and international fora and become recognised as a world-leading national system. With a change in health provision philosophy in 2023, the National Trauma Network was handed back to Health NZ and the key tenets of executive decision making and budgetary discretion abandoned. In the year to date much of the progress of the system has stalled while the new system is bedded in. Sometimes the benefits achieved in promising periods are maintained and on other occasions they are lost. This cycle has occurred three times in NZ in the last 30 years. It is too early to tell whether the clinical high ground of the National Trauma Network 2012-2023 will be maintained or lost.