Hospital-bed crisis getting worse

Press, 10 February 1983, Page 1

Hospital-bed crisis getting worse

Bed shortages at Princess Margaret Hospital are gradually getting worse. By winter, non-urgent admissions will probably have to be cancelled, according to the medical superintendent, Mr Heath Thompson. Medical services at the hospital were in danger of breaking down, Mr Thompson said at yesterday’s meeting of the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s health services committee. "In the morning when I arrive, the admitting nurse says there are no beds left and what are we going to do?

By a lot of juggling and sleight of hand we find one or two beds in the hospital to fill our urgent needs.” he said. “It is a question of how much longer we can go on before the hospital system breaks down.” Mr Thompson said that on February 1, all the beds in the hospital’s acute medical ward were full and 23 patients were overflowing into other wards — and that was at the start of the day. Fourteen beds in the acute ward were taken up by

elderly people awaiting placement in long-stay geriatric beds in hospitals or nursing homes, he said. "We are told time and time again that we do not need any more long-term beds, but we have three elderly patients in Princess Margaret Hospital who have been waiting more than a year for placement, and several who have waited as long as eight or nine months," Mr Thompson said. “It is not only long-term patients who are in difficulties.” he said. “In November,

I a patient was admitted until the next psycho-geriatric bed • came available. That patient is still with us awaiting I placement. j “The situation is very frusi (rating and causes a lot of . extra strain on medical and i nursing staff, as well as on those patients who have to put up with being whisked from one ward to another as beds are juggled round.” Mr Thompson said. . "This is all happening in February, when it is supposed to be a little quieter.” He predicted that by May,

June, and July the situation would be worse still, and non-urgent admissions might well have to be stopped again. Non-urgent admissions for elective surgery were stopped for a week last August at Princess Margaret Hospital when all the beds were full. Urgent admissions had increased, and this meant that arranged admissions had to be reduced to make up for them. More and more arranged admissions would therefore have to be put off

for longer periods, Mr Thompson said. The committee's chairman. Mrs H. C. Gardiner, said that Sbnnyside and Templeton hospitals were also under stress from increased admissions. Sunnyside had stopped non-urgent admissions during the holidays. "Demands on our hospitals have increased, yet our public hospitals are being accused of spending too much money." she said. "It is time we refuted the view that public hospitals are consuming too much of the Health vote."