Urgency to add on to hospital

Christchurch Women's Hospital will be "urgently" extended to help it cope with soaring demand.

The Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) voted unanimously yesterday to go ahead with additions to levels two and three of the building, which was opened only four years ago and proved too small almost from the start.

The additions will allow some of Christchurch Hospital's departments to be relocated to free up an additional ward for general medicine, which has been struggling to cope with demand that exceeds its capacity by about 30 beds on an average day.

The cost of the Christchurch Women's extension is unknown, as it was discussed in committee yesterday.

CDHB chief executive David Meates said moving urology into Christchurch Women's was an imperfect solution, but easily the best of the available options.

"No-one will jump up and down in agreement, but this is the best compromise ... If we don't get this sorted, general medicine will grind the hospital to a halt," Meates said. "It's not just a general medicine problem."

Meates said one of the advantages of the solution, over other proposals, was that the additional space in Women's Hospital would still be needed once urology moved into a new building in 2016.

"We need to be careful we don't continue to bury capital in parts of no long-term value, but this is part of a long-term plan."

General medicine is allocated 137 beds but regularly needs up to 170, meaning as many as 35 patients are spread through other wards.

Chief of medicine Alan Pithie said 95 per cent of the time there were inadequate beds in general medicine and the proposal would improve patient safety.

"It's difficult to emphasise how fragmented it is at the moment. We had 70 doctors through one ward in one day recently," Pithie said. "We have complete chaos and unless we do something, it's likely to get worse.

"The demographics of an ageing population means there will be increasing demand."

The length of stays had increased over the past few months, possibly because of the fragmentation of the service.

"We think patients are getting a bad deal out of being distributed around the hospital," Pithie said.

Meates conceded the Women's Hospital, which regularly goes into gridlock, was too small when built and too inflexible but he said it was planned according to Statistics New Zealand forecasts of births.

"If birth rates had declined, then people would have said it was the right size," he said after the board meeting.

"Those involved worked with the projections they had.

"Hindsight is a wonderful thing."

At the time it was built, birth numbers were about 5000 per year and predicted to drop. However, they have risen and are forecast to be up to more than 7000 a year by 2013.

CDHB women's and children's health general manager Pauline Clark said clinicians reluctantly accepted that moving urology into Women's Hospital was the best option.

Meates said the inflexibility of the Women's Hospital would not be repeated in the redevelopment of Christchurch Hospital planned to begin in 2016.

"Now there is new flexibility built in – that's part of the ongoing development of the art and science of developing hospitals."

The Christchurch Women's Hospital extensions were needed before next winter, Meates said.

- © Fairfax NZ News