Retaining unit 'crucial'

A leading Australasian expert says rehabilitation units are a crucial part of an efficient hospital system as MidCentral Health weighs up its options for its Star 3 facility.

Stephen Buckley has come out fighting for the 12-bed Palmerston North unit in response to reports that the DHB might review its future.

Board chief executive Murray Georgel said a decision had not even been made to review the service, but leaked papers from a February workshop showed pulling out was one of the options proposed for consideration in an effort to rein in a forecast $9.9 million deficit.

Dr Buckley, president of the Australasian faculty of rehabilitation medicine of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, said the idea did not make economic sense, and undermined the human right of access to rehabilitation.

"In an efficient hospital, the rehabilitation unit really does represent the back door out of the hospital system." If patients were not being prepared for an orderly discharge, they would block beds in hospital wards needed for elective patients. The unit was an integral part of the service; the bridge between hospital and home.

People who were restored to the best possible level of function before they left hospital also cost the wider community less.

They would be less dependent on rest home or in-home care, and more likely to return to paid work and paying taxes. Dr Buckley said with time, luck and determination, some people eventually recovered enough to go home and get on with their lives. But without rehabilitation, that was a matter of chance.

He said a rehabilitation service without a dedicated unit would be difficult to maintain and more expensive if staff had to travel to patients.

Without the unit, it would be harder to attract and retain specialist staff, he said, and New Zealand could not afford to lose specialists as it lagged behind Bangladesh with only one rehabilitation specialist per 270,000 people.

- © Fairfax NZ News