Urgent meetings are being held at District Health Boards amid a surge in the number of patients showing up at emergency departments.
“Right now it's struggling it's on the edge and we are teetering on crisis point,” said Sandy Richardson, who has worked in ED for over 30 years.
She is also a senior lecturer and a researcher.
“It's something that's been building up over time despite the best efforts.
"For a long time the health system has been under funded, we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the capacity,” said Richardson.
In January to March last year, 24,611 went through Christchurch’s emergency department, but this year that spiked by 18 percent to 29,161 patients in the three months.
Canterbury District Health Board CEO Peter Bramley said they are not alone.
“It seems across the country there is a significant increase in demand in terms of acute care provision across particularly our hospital worlds.”
The demand is so great that there are not enough beds, and patients are having to go on the floor, in the corridor on stretchers, or in the back of ambulances.
Sandy Richardson said half of those who go to Christchurch’s ED are admitted to hospital.
“We're seeing the right people but that does mean we're struggling with high volumes of very unwell people so we need to have the resources to deal with that and that’s not an ED problem that’s a systems problem,” said Richardson.
It means less urgent treatment like elective surgeries are being delayed, and DHBs want to find out why EDs are being swamped in the first place.
“At this stage we're not entirely sure what’s driving that all.The early indicators of data are its multi-factorial as in there are increased presentations to emergency department with increasing complexity but there is also pressure in primary care there’s also pressure with challenges of complexity of care,” said Peter Bramley.
The Government has committed almost half a billion dollars to our health system, and it’s also building a programme around acute care to reduce flows in ED.
“The devil is in the detail and we haven’t seen the detail yet so we don’t know what will come of this i think there is potential though,” said Sandy Richardson.
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