Hospital Bd told to plan for fewer beds

Press, 18 April 1980, Page 1

Hospital Bd told to plan for fewer beds

Health reporter

The North Canterbury Hospital Board has been told to plan to make big reductions in the number of long-stay beds in its hospitals.

The Health Department has instructed the board to make such plans before the Government will consider giving the board money to run its hospitals for the coming year. The department has said the board was “over-bed-ded” when compared with the department’s guidelines on bed numbers. According to these guidelines, psychiatric beds, most of them at Sunnyside Hospital, will have to be reduced 56 per cent to 346, and the number of poychopaedic beds at Templeton Hospital will have to be reduced 18 per cent to 520. Long-stay beds for geriatric patients will fall 25 per cent to 742. The guidelines are based on research by the department’s Management and Research Unit in Wellington. Detailed information on the guidelines is not avail-

able from the board. A spokesman for the department said yesterday that the guidelines were prepared by medical experts based on “their best assessments” of the needs of hospital boards. This information was compared with overseas trends. The Otago and Southland hospital boards have also been told to produce a blueprint for the reduction of long-stay bed numbers. No suggestions have been made by the department that short-stay beds, such as most of those in the Christchurch Hospital, should be reduced in number. The reductions in longstay beds made over the next 10 years would not mean staff cuts. It would mean that the board might not replace the staff who leave. The department’s aim is

to replace expensive hospital beds, which for longterm patients cost up to $45 a day, with less costly, out-patient programmes. For example, a reduction in long-stay bed numbers would mean an increase in the number of psychiatric home-care services. If the board is able to achieve the total reduction sought by the department, it could save about $6.5 million in one year. Although notice of the reduction plan was given to the board’s finance committee this week, there was no strong response because exact details of the bed numbers involved were not given to the committee. ,The chairman of the board (Mr T. C. Grigg) cautioned members of the committee not to “overreact,” to the proposed plan.