Hospitals hit 100% occupancy more than 600 times last year
Hospitals hit 100% occupancy more than 600 times last year, figures released to 1News reveal.
It means on average each day roughly two hospitals around the country were running at an occupancy higher than they were resourced for.
In the year to last November there were 656 instances when a hospital was at or over 100% occupancy. In 2021 this happened 708 times.
The figures, which were released to 1News under the Official Information Act, daunted those on the frontline.
‘Scary’ data reveals how full hospitals are
Australasian College of Emergency Medicine’s Dr Kate Allan says it’s an issue that’s been building for years.
“I think that’s quite scary data to know that hospitals are so full. We definitely can feel that on the floor in the emergency department.”
She says when hospital wards are at very high occupancy that’s often when EDs become overcrowded with standing room only.
“When there’s not enough beds our patients queue. They queue in our hallways, they queue in our ambulance bays, they queue in ambulances and they don’t get seen in a timely manner.”
The data also shows the instances where occupancy was the highest in 2022.
On January 6, 2022 Thames Hospital was at 117% occupancy, which meant it had 35 beds but 41 patients.
On three instances last year Christchurch Hospital hit 116% occupancy.
And the highest was Te Nīkau Grey Hospital when on 12 September it was at 139% occupancy. Extra beds were used and the hospital said “at no time… have there been any inpatients being cared for in corridors or other unstaffed areas”.
Labour’s Bread and Butter politics is about delivery of service over ideology.
Labour had become bogged down in believing bureaucratic changes in the background was a means of delivering outcomes rather than actually raising taxes and paying for more social infrastructure!
Chippy has to understand that 2023 is a debate over State Capacity.
National and ACT want to amputate the State while Labour, Greens and Māori Party want to build State capacity!
The 30 year neoliberal experiment cut the NZ State to the bone and the political project for each National and ACT Government is to strangle off revenue to the State so the State can’t redistribute it. That way citizens don’t become ‘reliant’ on providing subsidy to every day living, because once people get used to having services that work, they demand it politically.
This story about Hospital capacity spells out we don’t just need more drs and more nurses, we need more hospitals!
Because woke identitiarians have taken over the Left, virtue signalling diversity is more important than the actual quality of service!
We have to get beyond that.
We need more Nurses, more Drs, more hospitals, more police, more Army, more Teachers, more schools, more corrections officers, better public transport, better prisons, our own pharmaceutical industry, and we can only fund that by taxing the fucking rich!
Left Universalism is the way we bring electoral solidarity to beat National and ACT, alienating woke middle class cancel culture identity politics will only divide the Left and allow the most hard right Government this country has ever seen.
Poor people are not sitting around the kitchen table cancelling people for misusing pronouns, they are sitting around the table trying to work out how they pay the bills.
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I’m currently writing this from Tauranga Hospital after spending a second night here with my daughter.
Unfortunately we’ve had quite a bit to do with the hospital system over the last 18 months and I personally believe that most kiwis have no idea how broken the system is.
Ive the past fortnite we’ve had two ambulance trips and a total of 5 A&E admissions due to my daughter starting to have seizures two weeks ago with no prior history.
Up until the current admission each of those visit have resulted in us being sent home with no tests, no treatment plan, no follow up put in place and being told there is nothing that they can do.
I was told yesterday by a nurse that the ward has loss over 80% of its staff over the psst 18 months, and while some have been replaced the majority haven’t and the replacements have minimal experience.
As a result that nurse refuses to work afternoon and night shifts as the quality of staff and staffing levels are in her words “dangerous”. She has raised this with her union who advised her to take it to HR which she did and was apparently told they aren’t aware of any issues. Meantime over this same period back office admin staff have increased by over 20%.
The fact that Greymouth Hospital is ‘worst’ on that list is emblematic of the deep hole the country is in.
The hospital was entirely rebuilt and only opened about a year ago. Not only was it behind schedule, but it was immediately obvious that it was far too small.
A situation which was entirely avoidable, because the old hospital building next door could have been connected to the new one. Instead it was demolished.
The hospital also runs the main primary care clinic. But don’t bother calling for an appointment — there’s a waiting list to see a G.P., and it’s usually over one month away.
Even more scandalously, thirty minutes away, two more hospitals were shut down by the government. Locals occupied the emergency room for days in protest, but it was demolished anyway.
One of those hospitals had hundreds of mental beds, which we constantly read in the newspapers are desperately needed. It is now an abandoned building.
With disgraceful public services like this, no wonder everybody is trying to leave the country.
If only the National party and Act parties had thought about infrastructure before the allowed massive immover their 9 year term,we would never have been left with our broken health system.
Blaming Labour is fucking lame and pathetic.
The only decision they can make now is to build bigger and get on with it. However should National win the election expect nothing but more carnage.
That’s ridiculous. The problem is privatization and neoliberalism. Why is Roger Douglas still free to walk around after his crimes against New Zealand?
Sorry Bob it should read massive immigration during not immover. I’m certain you have nothing better to do than correct my bad England.
Mark I had a hip replacement under the previous National government. Things were so dire and the waiting lists so huge they outsourced to private hospitals to clear the wait lists at a massive cost to tax payers.
What it showed was how decrepit National/ACT allowed our health system to become.
Even worse is that National were happy to fund Acts private partnership Charter schools with taxpayer money whilst our health system was irreparably damaged.
Personally I’m over this whole National/Labour argument the reality is that they’re both as bad as each other.
There is a kid next to my own who has been here since Friday. She has injured her leg and requires surgery, however the the only surgeons qualified to do the surgery have private patients and won’t be available until tomorrow (Wed). In the meantime this kid despite being pumped fill of morphine spends most of the day and night screaming in pain.
The Dr’s Im having to deal with work 9-5 and then nothing. Scans stop except for accidents and emergency, senior Dr’s dissappear.
Healthcare should be a 24 hour function not a partial day function. Equipment should be being utilized 24×7 for the convenience of treating patients not for the convenice of staff. That’s not to say staff should be overworked or expected to work dangerous hour it should mean if we can’t do that then we need to hire/train sufficient numbers to enable it to occur.
Labour is doing exactly the same thing than National in terms of outsourcing surgical operations to private hospital, right at the moment, and as per the recommendations of the waiting list taskforce that was another useless bureaucratic committee put in place by the King of Bureaucrats, Andrew Little. Little’s management of the Ministry of Health is probably the worst there has ever been. Not only he did not do any meaningful (plenty of both Labour and Nat previous health ministers are in that case), but on top, he managed to spend millions of dollars for consulting firms for nothing but a change on the heading on letters of declined or delayed appointments for Kiwi patients, millions of dollars for hospital beds and staff recruitment that were never realized.
Are we now paying for lockdowns that prevented people getting standard medical tests and treatments?
Are we also now paying for lockouts that prevented hospitals recruiting staff from overseas?
It’s not as if they weren’t warned.
I’m currently admitted to Christchurch Hospital. I have been in bed at home in agony for 18 days as there has been no free bed until yesterday. I’m getting sicker as days go by, to the point of a wheelchair for my mobility. My GP is 70km away. No GPs closer to me are taking new patients.
The hospital foyers are all full of posters about where else you should be- it’s basically a long fancy series of signs saying ’Fuck off’. I have been writhing in agony for days and am yet to be assessed. I am also not being administered pain medication which I am desperate for.
If anyone has any high grade heroin that they would like to sell me, reply away.. I would trust that over my current level of state care.
There is no kindness, dignity, hope, empathy nor provision for the delivery of care.
I am a sole parent and have had to give up my hard won custody temporarily due to the fact that medical waiting times are weeks long and I can’t be the Mum I need to be right now.
Vets wouldn’t allow animals to suffer like human NZ patients are- it’s inhumane, cruel and totally unethical.
Thames hospital is mostly an empty building. You could easily double the number of beds. We still have less beds nationally now than back in the 1970s. How much bigger is the population now?
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