Auckland Hospital forced to put off operations

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

Ten patients were bumped down the surgery waiting list at Auckland Hospital yesterday because of a shortage of beds and a surge of acutely sick people.

The 10 had just crept to the top of the elective ("non-urgent") waiting list and some were on the verge of going into the operating theatre.

Several will have to wait only until next week for surgery, but the unlucky ones have been put off until after Christmas. They need operations ranging from general surgery, which can include gall bladder removal, to neuro-surgery.

Dr David Sage, the Auckland District Health Board's chief medical officer, said he was very unhappy about having to cancel surgery and send patients home untreated from the hospital, which opened in October.

"We really have to apologise to those people we had to cancel. Some of them were quite distressed."

The hospital had underestimated the number of staff and beds needed in the fortnight before Christmas, sending too many nurses on leave.

In the past fortnight it had closed down 13 beds for the holiday season, yet since Sunday had been swamped by unusually large numbers of patients with a range of illnesses from heart disease to acute appendicitis.

Dr Sage said the cancelled operations were among 24 scheduled yesterday. They had to be put off as the ward beds the patients would have gone to were needed by some of the 40 patients waiting "at first light" in the admission and planning unit.

A surgeon, who declined to be named for fear of being sacked, rang the Herald in frustration yesterday during the overload.

"Auckland City Hospital is just a disaster zone at the moment - inadequate pre-operative clinics, theatres that don't work because of the sterile supply service, the overall reduction in beds.

"We cannot meet the community's needs in the currently structured hospital.

"Everybody is standing around frustrated; 100 people on the floor, unable to do anything until the bed crisis is solved. What's happened today was predictable."

His comments echo those of the hospital's director of orthopaedic trauma, Bruce Twaddle, whom the board censured in October before backing down.

In the face of rapid population growth, the board says it generally has enough beds, despite planning to reduce the annual average number by 73 beds by the completion of the shift to the new hospital next June.

It is relying on more efficiency, such as doing more operations on the day a patient is admitted, rather than requiring them to come into hospital the night before.

But Dr Sage said the hospital was managing to do this with fewer than half the patients it had intended to. He attributed this to teething problems in the hospital's new systems.

One was the sterile supply service, which cleans and sterilises surgical instruments. It was not expected to be operating at full speed for at least another month.