John MacDonald: Memo to Health Minister - people get sick in winter

The Government knew that this year especially was going to be particularly tough with huge numbers of people off sick with Covid, writes John MacDonald. Photo / 123RF

Opinion

OPINION:

You know how at Christmas time we all run around like headless chooks in a panic buying stuff and organising things. We do it every year even though we've known for 12 months that Christmas is a thing and it happens every year.

I've never heard someone at Westfield Mall, for example, screaming that no one told them this was about to happen.

"I had no idea about this. Why didn't you tell me?" I've never heard it - because we all know it's coming. Nevertheless, we still leave things to the last minute and we still get into a bit of a spin when it all gets a bit overwhelming at the last minute.

Which is a bit like the situation at the Canterbury District Health Board at the moment. And just like Christmas, the story is similar - no room at the inn.

With high admission numbers, Christchurch Hospital is running at more than 110 per cent capacity.

Because what's happening is we're now into winter, more people are getting seriously unwell and they're taking up beds that would otherwise be used for people having non-urgent or elective surgeries.

Christchurch Hospital is overrun with patients and people are getting the calls every day to say their surgeries have been delayed. This includes cancer patients.

In one 24-hour period at the start of this week, 380 people turned up at the Emergency Department at Christchurch Hospital and 30 per cent of them had to be admitted. That's 114 new patients, just like that.

And, as a result, there are more patients than beds at the hospital. Specifically, what the health board calls "resourced beds". Now I'm not a doctor, but I'd say that a "resourced bed" is a bed that comes with the staff and equipment to look after a patient.

You can have as many beds as you want at a hospital but if they're not resourced, then they're just a piece of furniture, aren't they? And what use is a piece of furniture to someone who desperately needs hospital care and treatment? It's useless. You may as well check into an hotel.

The immediate past president of the College for Emergency Medicine, Dr John Bonning, talked about this on Newstalk ZB this morning.

He can't understand either why, every time this happens, the crowd that run the hospitals look all shocked. "We never saw this coming. We're being overrun with patients. Please stay away."

And Bonning says it's clear to him that more funding needs to be pumped into acute patient care. Because what's happening here in Christchurch, and elsewhere too, is that people who need treatment are being bumped off the surgery list because the hospitals can only just cope with the urgent stuff.

The other factor here too is the number of health board staff off sick at the moment - especially with Covid. More than 170 health board staff are at home with Covid at the moment.

But just like more people getting sick because it's winter, having less staff available to work was another thing the health bosses would have known about. But again, patients are paying the price - especially the ones waiting for non-urgent surgeries and things like that.

So who is to blame for all this? If any Tom, Dick or Harry knows that hospitals get busier every winter, and if every Tom, Dick or Harry knows that more health staff are likely to be off sick this winter with Covid - who has cocked up?

You could point the finger at the health board because it runs things and has all manner of planning people on the payroll thinking about this sort of thing. So if it's their job to prevent this sort of thing happening - but it still happens - then surely it rests on their shoulders, doesn't it?

They're responsible for delivering the healthcare services and if that's compromised, they're to blame.

You could say that. And you might say that. But my finger is pointed fairly and squarely at the Government. Because, just like the health bosses, the Government also knows that more people need hospital treatment during winter.

Just like the health bosses, the Government also knew that this year especially was going to be particularly tough with huge numbers of people off sick with Covid. They talked about Omicron peaking about a month ago but I never believed that for a minute and even I could see this thing going on for months.

And unlike the health bosses, the Government gets to decide how much investment goes into our hospital system. The health bosses just have to make do with what the Government gives them.

And when you've got a Government that crows about health spending - but then admits that most of it is going into setting up two new health bureaucracies and wiping debt from the existing 67 health boards - then it's pretty cheap talk.

And that's why I have some sympathy for the Canterbury District Health Board and, in particular, Christchurch Hospital for the situation it is in right now.

And I fully back Bonning's call for more money to be put into acute patient care. Because, as we're seeing right now, it's those acute patients that are swamping the hospital and causing more delays and lost time for people who're being told on a daily basis that their surgery isn't happening.