Patients' families make plea to health board for local care

Having a mentally ill elderly relative cared for in another region is heart rending, and people who have endured it are urging Whanganui District Health Board to provide care locally.
Mentally ill elderly people with behaviour problems ? making them a danger to themselves and others ? haven't had a facility to accommodate them in the Whanganui DHB region since late 2003, when Jubilee Hospital closed.
Patients in this category ? labelled psychogeriatric in the past ? have since been sent to facilities outside the region, in Wellington and New Plymouth, for example.
Two weeks ago Whanganui District Health Board chief executive officer Memo Musa said there was nobody in the region who needed psychogeriatric care at the moment. Several readers have disputed this, with at least four different patients mentioned.
The board said goodbye to the possibility of having a psychogeriatric facility in the region on March 11, because the Health Ministry refused to fund a Whanganui DHB facility and said care should be provided regionally.
MidCentral District Health Board has chosen Summerset Retirement Village, Rest Home and Private Hospital, in Levin, to accommodate psychogeriatric patients, with four beds available on an as-needed basis for Whanganui DHB patients.
Bob Baggott, an Alzheimer's support group member, was disturbed by this choice of provider. He wondered if the DHB had carried out an audit at the Levin facility.
He asked whether Mr Musa had given real thought to the plight of a family suddenly 100km from its loved one, and asked for more effort to find a local solution.
Claudia Loveridge, a registered nurse, visited her husband Lloyd for two years while he was in two facilities in New Plymouth. He was diagnosed as having senile dementia with aggression, and was now receiving good care in a Wanganui rest home.
She said he attacked someone while she was out of town and he was having respite care in a Wanganui facility. He was then sent to New Plymouth.
She had visited him there once a week, and said the care was poor.
He stopped walking, talking and eating, and his hair began to fall out. Meanwhile, the effort of travelling and the heartache of watching her husband go downhill took a toll on her own health.
Her husband had been back in Wanganui since November and had regained his appetite and regrown his hair. Staff at his current rest home were able to manage his behaviour.
Mrs Loveridge had nursed at Wanganui's Jubilee Hospital for 12 years, and lamented the closure of a ward ideally suited for people like her husband.
She said the idea of a Levin facility was dreadful and she would fight for a Wanganui one to help other people in her position.
Maxine Pringle said her mother was in psychogeriatric care in a Feilding facility that would close shortly.
Patients from it would be moved to Levin. She said her family felt helpless and frustrated at this fait accompli. They had viewed the Levin facility and said its security was not high enough for their mother, who was continually trying to "escape".
The family was unsure whether staff there had received specialised training in psychogeriatric care.
The region had an ageing population and its care needs could only increase, Mrs Pringle said.
"I cannot believe that Whanganui DHB have allowed us to lose a service which is clearly going to be needed in the future, and which I believe is actually needed now."
Another Wanganui woman, a former nurse who didn't want to be named, was relieved to hear last week that her husband would be allowed to stay on in Delta, Wanganui Hospital's extended care mental health unit, though he did not fit the usual criteria.
She visited him three times a week, and said the care he was receiving from nurses and diversional therapists was excellent.
Because of his fitness and his behaviour, no rest home would take him. Anyway, the only rest home in Wanganui with a secure unit was not secure enough for him.
His wife said the closed ward at Jubilee Hospital would have been ideal ? it was secure, and had beautiful peaceful surroundings and trained staff, including diversional therapists.
She pitied other families who struggled to care for their relatives in the community.
"There are good support services, but there's only so much they can do. They can't be there 24 hours a day."
She dreaded her husband being sent out of town, because she couldn't drive and knew he needed to see her.
She like to keep an eye on the care he was receiving, and said patients were especially likely to miss out if their families were far away and they were sometimes difficult.
Chair of the Waimarino health action group Weston Kirton pointed out that Levin was nearly three hours' drive for southern Ruapehu residents who could be affected. He said he would be writing to Health Minister Annette King about the situation.