Concern Over Capacity Project In Hospital

Concern Over Capacity Project In Hospital

“An industrial planning model developed for forecasting, stocking and selling cans of baked beans is being applied to patients at Christchurch Hospital,” Eleanor Carter of Health Cuts Hurt said today. “Clinicians were pressured to move patients out more quickly when high levels of bed-use occured at New Year 2005.” She was commenting on a paper going to the CDHB meeting this Friday 11 March which claims $500k pa savings from the scheme.

“Last week’s gridlock in the ED demonstrates that the Hospital needs to work on a model where demand not supply is the key factor,” said Eleanor Carter. “The industrial model has not been used in other New Zealand Hospitals to our knowledge and in reality is driven to achieve savings due to the board’s underfunding from the new Population Based Funding formula.”

“So far it has been used for Public Holiday planning only but is now to be expanded for every day planning,” said Eleanor Carter. “The report states that a good example occurred ‘between Xmas and New Year, when the projections showed that at the current low rates of discharges the hospital would be in gridlock over the New Year long weekend. By showing this information to key clinical staff, clinicians were called in to discharge suitable patients, resulting in sufficient beds being made available to meet the weekend admissions’.”

“Our group has an issue with this model where pressure can be applied to clinicians to discharge patients due to the shortage of beds,” said Eleanor Carter.

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