East Auckland MPs Simeon Brown and Christopher Luxon are forging ahead with pleas to reinstate an East Auckland overnight medical clinic after underfunding and an inability to recruit doctors for the night shift forced its closure in late December last year.
CEO of East Care, Gordon Armstrong told 1 NEWS funding for the overnight service was cut by Counties Manukau DHB in June 2018, and to keep the service going, the business lost at least $400,000 a year.
There are four overnight clinics in Auckland in addition to hospital-based emergency departments - Shorecare, based on the North Shore, White Cross in Henderson, Remuera and historically East Care.
According to Ministry of Health figures , Counties Manukau DHB serves a popluation of over half a million people.
East Care is the only service not funded by a DHB. CEO, Gordon Armstrong told 1 NEWS the business was making a loss for two years before it closed.
“We were north of $400,000 a year loss just for the overnight service. And that’s been painful,” he said.
In December last year, the clinic was down two GPs and at the time was not able to recruit more for the overnight shift, which made an already difficult situation untenable.
Armstrong says clinics that are funded could afford to pay doctors more, which he believes led to the attrition.
“It’s the cost of the people,” Armstrong says. And although there was community support for the facility, “we couldn’t do it safely”, he said.
Despite figures showing East Care, out of the four Auckland overnight centres, provided the most care, (north of 30 per cent, Armstrong says), he says Counties Manukau have never really given him a “compelling explanation” as to why funding was cut.
Pakuranga MP, Simeon Brown, says he understands the cut was due to policy changes in overnight care by Counties Manukau DHB.
But, he says, as each DHB is responsible for its own policies, it leads to a "mishmash of services" across the Auckland region.
Last week, Botany MP Christopher Luxon presented a petition to reinstate the 24-year-old service, signed by over 10,000 locals to officials at the DHB’s monthly board meeting but it was verbally dismissed on the spot.
“The bottom line is that the Board said they would not support the service due to funding pressures and their belief that Middlemore can easily accommodate the East Care urgent care customers,” Luxon said.
He said he had pushed the DHB "very hard" on the issue.
"I would argue for the people of East Auckland that to have to go out of the area for an emergency issue when you are unwell or stressed is not great," Luxon said.
Figures from the Auckland Regional After Hours Network, a medical database, show Middlemore Hospital sees on average 65 patients per overnight shift while Eastcare, when it was operating, saw 20.
However, late last month, Middlemore appealed to those in the region to only visit the emergency department for emergencies and to instead visit a “GP or Accident and medical clinic”.
Armstrong says it makes no sense to add to an already at-capacity emergency department.
“Do they really want a 25 per cent volume growth?” he says.
The next step will be a public meeting which local MPs hope will be an opportunity to allow the community to put more pressure on the DHB.
Counties Manukau DHB have been approached for comment.
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