Three-month deadline for Chch heart patients

Press, 26 November 1980, Page 1

Three-month deadline for Chch heart patients

Health reporter Heart patients in Christchurch normally sent to Wellington for surgery will have to make alternative arrangements within three months.

Wellington Hospital Board authorities said yesterday that the demands of Wellington’s “catchment” area for heart surgery patients, the lower half of the North Island and Nelson and Marlborough, had to be met. This would soon rule out any patients , from the North Canterbury Hospital Board district. Dr Malcolm Nicholson, chairman of the Wellington Hospital Board, .said yesterday that he had told the North Canterbury Hospital Board that its rate of referrals now equated with about 150 by-pass operations a year. “At the same time, the capacity of the Wellington heart unit is about 250 bypass operations a year,” Dr Nicholson said. Referrals from Wellington’s own catchment area are about equal to that number. “We regret having to ask the North Canterbury board to look for alternative treatment for patients within three months, but we will not cut it off. We have to allow a reasonable time for alternatives to be found,” Dr Nicholson said.

One obvious move would be for the North Canterbury Hospital Board to refer patients to the Dunedin heart unit. However this would mean reversing a practice of not referring many patients there over the last year. The chief executive of the Otago Hospital Board, Mr D. C. J.. Pearce, said

yesterday that the board had heard nothing officially from either the Wellington or North Canterbury boards on the ultimatum from Wellington on Christchurch heart patients. “Naturally we would be willing to meet the North Canterbury board at board or clinician level,” Mr Pearce said.

“We hope that the resolution of this problem will create more use of the Dunedin heart unit,” he said.

Mr T. C. Grigg, chairman of the North Canterbury Hospital Board, said last evening that heart surgery units in New Zealand were financed nationally and he would be “very concerned” if Christchurch heart patients got a raw deal compared with those elsewhere. “The Government is investigating the matter,' and the ' three months that Wellington have allowed us give time for negotiations to proceed,” he said. The Hospitals Advisory Council is considering the use of the heart units in Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin. It will report to the Minister of Health (Mr Gair).

Among points covered by the report is the reluctance of Christchurch cardiologists to send patients to the Dunedin unit, and the reduced referrals from Christchurch to the Auckland heart unit over the last 18 months.

The Auckland Hospital Board has asked the Government for more finance to extend the Auckland heart unit, but is unlikely to succeed while the Dunedin heart unit remains under-used. 7