New Zealand poor in ICU world ranking

New Zealand has among the lowest rates of intensive care in the developed world, with 30 percent fewer critical-care beds than Australia, experts say.

Christchurch Hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) has reached crisis point, with scores of cardiac operations cancelled because of overcrowding.

The Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) is injecting $1.3 million to replace old equipment, and $2.3m to get up to 25 extra staff.

The Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (Anzics) says there have been problems with the Christchurch ICU and it is considering reviving a government consultation group to ensure similar problems do not develop.

It is believed Christchurch Hospital's ICU will soon have three beds per 100,000 population, while the national average is five beds per 100,000.

Anzics president Peter Hicks, of Wellington Hospital, said New Zealand had one of the lowest rates of ICU beds per head of population in the developed world. Australia had 30 per cent more ICU beds than New Zealand, he said, but it was difficult to measure care by the number of beds.

Hicks said he preferred to look at how many operations were cancelled because of overcrowding and how many patients needed to be transferred to other units.

On this basis, Christchurch had problems, but it was hoped the cash injection would help resolve them, he said.

"There is a feeling nationally that we don't have as many ICU beds as we need," he said. "The difference is trying to justify how many extra we need."

ICU bed space was expensive, costing about $300,000 for nurses to staff one bed for a year, he said. This did not include money for equipment, medication and doctors.

At the end of last year, an ICU specialist working group that advised the Ministry of Health acknowledged a lot of cardiac surgery was not being done because of overcrowding in ICUs, Hicks said.

CDHB chief executive David Meates said the $3.6m recently allocated to Christchurch's ICU was a "significant investment".

The board would soon release its facilities plan, which would look at how space would be used in the hospital, he said. ICU space would be an integral part of this.

- © Fairfax NZ News