Assurances on hospital broken—Mayor

Press, 2 July 1985, Page 9

Assurances on hospital broken—Mayor

Why should the people of Hokitika again believe West Coast Hospital Board assurances that Westland Hospital would remain, asked the Mayor, Mr Henry Pierson, yesterday.

The board said at the week-end that it had no intention of closing Westland Hospital, but would reduce it in size. Mr Pierson said that was merely repeating the assurance given in 1969 by the commission for the amalgamation of the hospitals on the West Coast, that there would be no cutbacks.

The board’s plan to close the Mandi geriatric ward and concentrate patients on the Williams ward has aroused a considerable storm in Hokitika. Mr Pierson said that the commission assured Hokitika that services at Westland Hospital would be greatly improved under amalgamation.

“For the benefit of those who are unaware of the ‘greatly improved services’ which have taken place since those fateful assurances were given, I suggest that they study the record for themselves and judge whether the people of Hokitika have just cause for. protesting against the board’s decision to close Mandi ward.” Mr Pierson said the first act of “improvement” was the removal of the orthopaedic services to Greymouth, followed by the closing of the operating theatre, community nurse training

school, Manson ward, hospital kitchen, Ellis ward, the decision to close the laundry and now the plan to close Mandi ward.

“This leaves the hospital with only Williams ward, Pounamu old people’s home and the outpatients’ department needed for the x-ray and physiotherapy services,” said Mr Pierson.

“What this board is actually doing is setting in train events which must surely bring about the situation when the cost of keeping the remnants of the hospital open will be considered uneconomic, and then the board will decide it must be closed,” he said.

“I make no apology when I suggest that in view of what has happened to Westland Hospital during the last 15 years, the people of Hokitika have been the victims of a slick confidence trick.

“Why should we now once again believe the assurances of the board that Westland will remain?”

The 1969 amalgamations decision was the “death sentence” of Westland Hospital, said Mr Pierson, and since then successive Labour and National Ministers of Health had been performing the burial rites, assisted by submissive hospital boards.

Mr Pierson alleged that the Hospital Board had contravened the law with the decision to close Mandi ward.