Waikato Hospital in Overload

Media Release

Date: 14 July 2013

Waikato Hospital in Overload

Waikato Hospital in Hamilton is in overload today (Sunday) a situation that has been building up over the last few weeks.

Waikato Hospital’s assistant group manager Jo-Anne Deane said that the overload is due to more patients than beds available and a full Emergency Department.

"Our inpatients at the moment seem to be sicker, therefore, they need to stay longer," she said.

The 600-bed hospital has been running on 98-101 percent occupancy during the week. At 8am today, the Emergency Department was full with 70 patients booked in. Extra staff were called in to triage patients. Those that were not urgent were asked to consider seeing their general practitioners tomorrow, go to an accident and emergency clinic such as Anglesea or Victoria St or wait for the backlog to clear.

“The types of presentations are 'across the board' in specialties from cardiac, to respiratory to accident related injuries. It is the very busy winter season,” said Ms Deane

“Our message to the public is to save our Emergency Department for real emergencies.

(See http://www.waikatodhb.govt.nz/events/pageid/2145879030/Keep_our_emergency_department_for_real_emergencies).

"We want to be able to focus our emergency resources on patients who genuinely need that care. However, we don’t want to chase those patients away who may have something serious but don’t want to bother us.

"Waikato still has the ability to cope with urgent presentations but for less urgent cases there may be a longer-than-usual wait.”

Waikato hospital has an on-call management team of senior managers to deal with this sort of overload on the hospital’s services.  That  team was called in the early hours of Sunday morning to facilitate and fast track patients highlighted for discharge and help co-ordinate staff coverage.

“On top of the patient demand we've got our own staff who are sick with winter illnesses and the ones that are on duty are increasingly under stress..

“We have asked staff to work extra hours in their shifts, and part-time staff to work extended hours to cope with the demand. Times like this take their toll on everyone - on patients, doctors, nurses and their families. We appreciate the extra mile staff are going during this busy time," said Ms Deane.

"We ask the public to bear with us. We're all doing what we can to get through this but this is July and winter - traditionally our busiest time - and it's going to be unrelenting for a few more days yet," she said.

Bullet points:

Demand

-       High numbers of presentations through the emergency department, approx. Sunday there were 70 patients in the department at 0600hrs, approximately 50 patients greater than usual

-       Increase in all presentations. No type of clinical condition e.g. flu related has been highlighted for the influx

-       Paediatric presentations have increased over the last week –a reflection of winter illness with chest complaints

-        

Capacity

-       600 bed hospital - significant pressure on inpatient beds - hospital occupancy on average 98 - 101 %

Strategies

·         Called in a ‘senior health management team’ to facilitate and fast track hospital flow

·         Increase triage through ED for emergencies only

·         Managing the level of staff across the services and deploying to areas needed - - Staff working additional shifts to keep capacity up - part time and casual doing more hours

·         Will review the situation daily to ensure that all hospitals in the Waikato district are being fully utilised and that hospital beds are being used for appropriate patients.

·         As a last resort if the rate of presentations continues some surgical cases that will require an overnight stay may be cancelled.  

ENDS

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